


If you want to be free, be free

by Marie_L



Category: The Pretender
Genre: 1970s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Porn, College, Coming of Age, Explicit Language, F/M, First Time, Loss of Virginity, Power Dynamics, Prequel, Stanford University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:54:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 31,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/pseuds/Marie_L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jarod escapes from the Centre in 1979 and goes in search of his only friend out in the world</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To be free

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: This story involves college students of the pre-AIDS era. Accordingly, there are references to drug use, underage drinking, swearing, irresponsible sex, and driving under the influence of hormones. Do not take it as a roadmap to life, kidlets.

_October 19, 1976 --_

` The feeling that washed over Jarod after they injected him with the drug was the most fantastic experience in his short life. The first rush was nearly orgasmic: he could practically feel the endorphins exploding out of every opioid receptor in his body, enveloping him in warmth, relaxation, joyfulness, raw pleasure. Then the mellower euphoria made him feel free, like his mind was not really owned by or even at the Centre anymore, every anxiety erased, at peace with himself and everyone around him. On some level he was aware that Raines was shouting at him, something about doing an exercise or test or blah blah blah; he didn't care anymore what they were ordering him to do or threatening to do to him, he was in the Now and Now was good.

And then the drug began to wear off, and the Now was not so good. Then it seemed every receptor had emptied itself of every endorphin and now could only dispense doses of pain, so that all of his muscles shrieked and stabbed him with every move, ripping to slivers at the cellular level. His mind swam around and around; he couldn't escape or stop or control it at all, like he could normally control his mind. That led to agitation and anxiety, which tensed his muscles, which stabbed and sliced him even more, leading to an unending cycle of agony and panic. He was horrifically afraid that they had killed him, or even worse, not killed him but killed his capacity for all future pleasure, so that for the rest of his life he would be nothing but a dysthymic machine, and maybe that's what they wanted all along.

Then Raines came in and injected him again, and to his relief it turned out his receptors weren't dead after all. This time they gave him the original drug plus some other chemical intended to increase his motivation during the high, and indeed that did kill the buzz a bit. Not enough to actually do the blah blah blah, but enough to tell Raines to fuck off and leave him alone and let him enjoy his time with his receptors. That was a bit rude, Sydney would definitely frown at that and give him a disapproving _Jer_ -rud, but Sydney wasn't there, so fuck him too. And then the drug began to wear off.

Around and around they went, for a couple of days or maybe a couple of years, he wasn't sure. Eight times they went around and around, all with the experimental drug combined with other things, whatever they thought could make him snap out of it and do some real work. It had worked in the rats, so why wasn't it working in the human lab rat? Then they gave up on the whole thing, and the drug _really_ began to wear off. And he began to understand with intimate detail what Hell was like.

After Jarod came out of it for real, two weeks later and fifteen pounds lighter, he knew he would have to escape. It took him three years to work up the nerve.

 

*****

 _December 2_ _6_ _, 1979_ \--

 

The lights would go out soon, so Jarod just got into bed and pretended to go to sleep early. The plan was in place, his pilfered supplies and money were in place, the lone infrared camera fritzed again so they couldn't see him very well in the dark. He had surreptitiously broken the camera at random intervals, to the point that the guards now simply expected it to die occasionally. They wouldn't come to fix it until morning, and by then he'd be gone. His script had been implanted in the security system, the letters to Sydney and the Director written. Now all he had to do was wait until it was late enough that whoever was watching the cameras began to get tired, and get moving. It was his last chance, he knew. The noose tightened around his neck with each passing month. If he didn't leave now, he feared he never would.

After Jarod had recovered from the infamous synthetic opiate experiment, Sydney had come back from "sick leave" -- looking pretty terrible, Jarod had to admit, but the timing was so suspicious he couldn't help mentally put it in quotes. Perhaps Raines had simply taken advantage of his absence, but the fact that Sydney had never said a word about it afterward indicated to Jarod that he either approved the experiment or tacitly allowed it to happen. Either way, whatever tenuous thread of naive hope that the Centre cared about his well being had finally been cut.

He began dropping heavy hints that maybe now that he was legally an adult he should be allowed to live outside the Centre and be paid like a regular employee. He didn't know his exact age but it had to be close to eighteen by then. Sydney deftly deflected this as usual, but word must have trickled up because very soon afterward they moved him to dramatically improved living quarters. At the same time, however, the sims suddenly became much more complex, months-long analyses of some of the knottiest problems in world affairs. Guatemala. Argentina. Israel. Cambodia. The latest was Iran, which since the Islamic overthrow had kept him occupied for most of the year. And every one of these simulations had been preceded by lengthy dossiers of all the human horrors that had already played out in these regions. They wanted to impress on him as strongly as possible how important the work was, how many people could potentially die if he didn't come up with some novel solutions.

Last year, for instance, he had been all set to implement his winter holiday plan and leave. The Egypt-Israel peace talks had finally broken through and succeeded, he was told. They neglected to tell him how much of his sims played into the negotiations, if any, but it still felt as if he had made some small positive contribution to humanity at large. But then they dropped Cambodia on him. The Vietnamese were planning a large offensive against the Khmer Rouge, and the DOD folks wanted to know how the United States could covertly assist the overthrow without actually supporting the dreaded communist Viet Cong, and keep the Soviets out of things as well. "Nobody's gonna publicly touch southeast Asia with a ten foot hot poker up our ass," one CIA analyst had curiously put it. The debriefing file on the Khmer Rouge was officially the most horrifying thing Jarod had ever read. Hundreds of thousands of people -- a number probably too low, Jarod estimated -- had been systematically murdered in brutal and monstrous ways, often for as little as wearing glasses or "sounding" educated. He finally had to tell Sydney he couldn't stand to read any more, and ask if he could go down to the exercise room for awhile. He ran for miles, trying to rid his mind of evils that, once imagined, cannot be unseen.

After that he agonized over whether to leave or not. Eventually he decided he couldn't selfishly disappear yet, not with mass slaughter still ongoing. The best window of opportunity for escape that year passed by. In February students of Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew old US-backed Iranian government, an event which apparently took precedence over the Cambodian killing fields as far as the Centre's government's sponsors were concerned. Jarod pressed the ranks all the way up to the Tower objecting to the reassignment, as much a defiance as he had over any sim since some of his pettier rebellions as a kid, and Sydney had gratifyingly backed him up for once. In the end they were overruled, though, and he was put to work learning Persian and devising strategies for a counter coup. In September radical student groups stormed the American embassy, a public relations triumph for the students and a disaster for the Carter administration, not to mention the hostages themselves.

Thus it was when the winter holidays rolled around again, Jarod found himself devising ways to free the 53 men still held captive at the embassy, while remaining acutely aware that he too was a hostage of sorts. He felt terrible about leaving the sim unfinished, as if he were personally keeping those hostages in limbo. He had worked as fast as he could to finish some reasonable scenarios for rescue before the escape deadline, leaving that work on the desk with the letters. But in truth there was always going to be some crisis in the world that they could use to guilt and manipulate him into obedience. Leaving the Centre meant leaving all of that behind, including any good work he might be doing. He would have to find alternate ways of helping people, on the outside.

Jarod had long ago observed that the week prior to the change of the calender year held some sort of major cultural significance. Sydney always went on his mystery vacation, and it seemed half the staff of the Centre was gone as well. The performance of those who did come to work tended towards the abysmal; many people seemed exhausted or irritable at having to be there, and they generally threw some food and books at him and locked him in his room most of the time. The staff was even more distracted on the first day of the year, but Sydney would be back by then, not distracted, so that day didn't work nearly as well for escape purposes.

Jarod's plan was fairly simple: Get out around midnight on the day when he was least likely to be attentively watched, giving him a lead time of at least eight hours; leave a script running in the security system that would misdirect them on the direction he was headed, giving him (he hoped) an additional couple of hours; and make a run for a town that he could find in the dark without getting lost. He estimated that he needed to secure a vehicle by 8 am to have a decent chance at escape. Over the past three years he had gathered as much intel as he could about the terrain around the Centre. The sweepers assigned to him weren't supposed to talk, but it had to be one of the most boring jobs in the world guarding him, and a lot of people liked to chat about their families, homes, vacations. He knew he was in Delaware somewhere south of Dover, that the south end of the building past the Tower ran parallel to an inlet on the Atlantic ocean, that Blue Cove was the nearest town and about 2-3 miles north up the coast, and that there were two other villages nearby manageable on foot. One of them was about twelve miles to the west, inland, and would be difficult to find without running along an easily monitored road. The other village, Sanderson, was on the coast about ten miles south. He knew that Delaware shared a peninsula with Maryland, and to really get away he'd either have to get north, towards interstate highway 95, or south through the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel. The northern route was more obvious and safer: Blue Cove was a lot closer than Sanderson, and there were more routes to get to the mainland in the north than the choke point at the Tunnel.

He opted for the unexpected route. South.

Angelo had been helping him gather materials, as he seemed to have fairly free run of the ventilation system. A watch, flashlight, boots, a coat, money. A few tools, to unbolt key ventilation shafts. Decent shoes were particularly hard to acquire, as people didn't exactly keep extras lying about at work. All they ever gave him were flimsy canvas shoes for walking the hallways, which he took off whenever he could get away with it anyway. The boots Angelo found appeared to come from a janitorial supply somewhere. They had both been taking money, a very little at a time and never everything in a wallet. Jarod felt a little bad about the stealing and kept a running tally in his head of everything owed, perhaps to pay it back one day, but it was a necessary evil. He hoped the couple hundred dollars acquired would be enough; he had no idea how much everyday items or food cost.

Jarod had begged Angelo on several occasions to come with him, that they should both be free, but Angelo always just shook his head no. Maybe he was afraid of being able to function out in the real world. Jarod was a little nervous on that point as well, but thought he could manage it, Sydney's constant hand-holding notwithstanding. After all, if every secretary, sweeper and technician at the Centre somehow made their way through autonomous adult life without falling apart, it couldn't be that difficult.

He briefly flicked on the flashlight under the covers in order to check the time. 11:40. Close enough. He arranged the pillows and blankets to look like a body-sized lump and rolled out of bed, in pitch blackness. He crawled along the floor to the edge of the wall to the camera's slight blind spot, just in case they were able to pick up some residual movement. The vent cover was easy to get off the wall by touch only, in the dark, with years of experience under his belt.

The bag of supplies was hidden in the vent down about 40 feet and around a bend. Jarod had told Angelo to meet him here at midnight if he changed his mind and wanted to come. No Angelo, but no sweepers either. He didn't think Angelo would betray him, but sometimes it was hard to tell what was going on in that enigmatic head of his. A lot of the time. Jarod silently bade him good luck, then made his way to service shaft for the elevator, and began climbing the fifteen floors to get up to ground level.

After about an hour he made to the point of the building that was the very furthest he'd ever ventured. The line between known and unknown. There were no audible alarms going off, and he'd wandered this long many times before without getting caught, but it was an extra relief to make this far tonight. Angelo had given him a drawing describing how to get to the southern storm drain, which supposedly came out about 50 feet above the shoreline. He could only hope the distances on the makeshift map were accurate; Angelo's spatial awareness always seemed to be pretty functional, and he trusted his friend.

At about two in the morning Jarod at last made it to the end of the drain and got the cover off. Things were proceeding a lot slower than he expected, but he vowed not to turn back now. He wasn't going to waste yet another year of his life locked in a basement. He took a deep breath of the unexpectedly frigid air, salty and fishy and amazingly fresh. Looking around the beach, he saw that there were limited ways to monitor the beach once he cleared the edge of the building. They probably had cameras mounted along the tree line, but it would be difficult to visualize him down at the water line. This was the most dangerous part of the escape plan, as he had a lifetime of experience with the internal security system but knew nothing about the externals. The beach was helpfully rocky in this section, which would hide his tracks. He reattached the storm drain cover and quickly made his way down to the water, then began to run.

He ran and ran, incredibly slow and slogging work in the boots and sand and water. He'd run about two miles when the beach suddenly ended, and he had to climb along the rocky shore. He was wearing all the clothes he had -- two shirts, two pairs of pants, a Yale sweatshirt stolen from Sydney's office and light jacket -- but with the temperature dropping below freezing, water everywhere, and no running, he began to shiver and slip on the icy rocks. Maybe a prison break in the dead of winter wasn't such a genius idea after all. Finally at about seven, with the sun just starting to come up, another beach appeared, and lights ahead in the distance. He began to run again, energized, faster than ever. His fingers and ears felt like they might freeze off any second, but he pushed through it, ignored every warning sign from his body, just like he had done on a million sims before.

The lights would be coming on in his room any minute now, and with it his sweeper team would discover he wasn't there. They would find the letters, and send out the alarm, and probably call Sydney back from wherever he went on his new year's vacation. The letter to the Director contained his reasons for leaving, and he specifically cited Raines' drug experiment as a motivating factor. Maybe for once there would be actual consequences for his despicable tests ... maybe. He wrote that as long the Centre failed to respect his personage and basic human rights, odds were they were failing to respect their clients or the public at large, and sooner or later would use his simulations to harmful ends. His letter to Sydney was more personal but essentially had the same content. He had no illusions they would change their behavior as a result of the letters, but at least he had said his peace.

He finally reached the town at about 8:30 am, later than he'd hoped to be on the road south. The temperature was hovering just at freezing, and a light sleeting rain began to fall, soaking his hair and pants and miserably chilling him. He looked around, trying to decide which car to try and steal, and put to the test whether those army jeep diagrams were really applicable to commercial vehicles. He hated to commit grand larceny mere hours into his freedom, but he didn't see many other options. The Centre was probably sending out patrols even as he was standing there, so there wasn't time to figure out public transportation. He had to get into a moving vehicle to have any hope of making it any further.

As he was trying to decide on a course of action, a green, strangely rounded truck-like conveyance pulled up beside him. The driver was a young woman with long reddish blond hair and an enviably cozy knitted hat, and there was another woman reading in the back seat, disinterested in even looking up at him. A young man with shoulder-length shaggy dark hair and an improbably colored purple jacket rolled down the window and stuck his head out.

"Hey, pretty, need a lift?"

 


	2. The Reedie contingent

Jarod scrambled to get into the dilapidated vehicle, which he would later learn was a Volkswagen minibus. He was soaking wet, and unfortunately the van was no warmer on the inside than the outside.

As if reading Jarod's mind, the young man with messy hair said, "Sorry, man, our heater's broken. Where are you headed? We're going up to DC today, my cousin the mechanic in Reston is going to take a look at Lola, hopefully fix the heater, make sure she's seaworthy enough to go over the Rockies."

North. They were going back towards Blue Cove, although probably more northeast instead of through town on the coast. Jarod didn't have a lot of options, so he just had to hope the Centre wouldn't have the capacity to throw up roadblocks on all the highways in the area, or perhaps wouldn't be willing to make such an effort to retrieve him. "Anywhere but here is fine. Thanks for stopping to pick me up. My name is Jarod." He slid onto a leather bench in the back.

The woman reading a book -- titled "Pornography: The New Terrorism," by someone called Andrea Dworkin -- finally looked up at him. "Jesus, Jonathan, he's wetter than a dog back here. At least give him a towel or blanket or something before he shivers to death."

The young man clambered over the benches to get to the luggage in the back, making introductions as he did so. "So our lovely driver today is Caroline" -- she waved a backwards hello without turning around -- "Little Miss Congeniality over there is Velma, and I'm the irrepressible Jonathan."

"Irrepressible? Don't you mean incorrigible?" snickered Velma.

"I vote for irredeemable," added Caroline from the front.

"Ignore them , they are irrespectible," Jonathan countered, and they all laughed. He handed Jarod a couple of towels and some dry clothes, all of lively colors. Jarod didn't think he'd ever worn a pink striped high collared shirt or blue velvet jacket, not even for a sim. Better than a sopping sweatshirt, though. "Where are you going after Reston? You are headed for the West Coast?"

"Eventually, we're stopping at a friend's in Chicago first for what promises to be an _epic_ New Year's party, complete with drink, drugs, and irresponsible sex. Gotta welcome in the eighties with appropriate pomp and circumstance. _Then_ we'll make for Oregon. You, my friend, are looking at the entirety of Delaware's Reedie delegation." He expanded his arms at his fellow travelers grandiosely.

Jarod hardly knew where to start with the questions from just that short statement. Before he could even begin, however, Velma threw in, "He doesn't know what a fucking Reedie is, Casanova." She looked at him. "Reed College. Portland, Oregon. Motto: 'Communism, Atheism and Free Love.' Home of a killer liberal arts curriculum, no grades, practically no law enforcement, the site of greatest spring college party in all of America, and haven for the richest trust-fund hippies on the Left Coast. It's nirvana. We've got to get back by the 12th for the spring semester, having completed our Christmas bourgeois familial duties. You dig?" Jarod definitely did not dig, but it sounded intriguing. But Portland was not the West Coast locale he ultimately wanted to reach.

They were heading past the turnout for Blue Cove and also main entrance to the Centre, although that was unmarked. Jarod flipped up the collar of his shirt and slunk down in the seat, furtively scanning for any activity. He saw a car with men in suits monitoring the on-ramp to the highway, but not apparently the traffic already on it coming up from the south. He slumped down even further anyway. Velma noticed where he was watching and narrowed her eyes, but didn't say anything.

Jonathan came over and flopped onto the seat next to him. "So, Jarod, where are you from?"

"I'm ... not sure. My parents are dead, I think. I was raised in a very ... isolated environment."

Jonathan took the hint that he didn't want to talk about it. "So now you're going to wander the roads of America looking for yourself? Deep. You don't have any destination in mind?"

"Right now I just want to get off the peninsula. But I would like to get to California eventually. Palo Alto." Now that they were past the critical danger point, Jarod began to feel utterly exhausted. He'd been running all night, had not slept in well over 24 hours, had not eaten in over fourteen. He could push it much longer of course, but vital functions like concentration would soon be faltering.

"Someone at Stanford? Nice. Unfortunately we're not going anywhere near there, but you're welcome to ride with us to Portland. Easy to hitchhike down I-5 from there."

"I appreciate that. I really needed a ride. Thank you for all your help." Jarod's stomach began to rumble, and he realized he was extremely thirsty too. "Do you have any water around here?"

Velma dug a thermos out of her knapsack."Here you go. Do you want something to eat, too?Hey, Jon, maybe we should stop for breakfast. My treat."

"I'd rather get across the bay first." Jarod took a deep drink from the thermos, then gratefully took the proffered bar, which he assumed was some sort of nutritional supplement in convenient travel format. It was labeled SNICKERS, a curious and fun name for a supplement. He leaned his head against the window, staring at the daylight and trees and houses whizzing by outside, and absentmindedly opened and took a bite of the bar. Then the luscious sugar hit his tongue, and he jerked out of his reverie and stared at her in amazement. "Wow. That's very good."

Jonathan and Velma glanced at each other. "You've never had a candy bar before?" He shook his head and stuffed more of the delicious concoction into his mouth. _Candy,_ his mind categorized. Its reputation was not overrated in Jarod's estimation.

The sugar rush managed to keep Jarod alert for ten more minutes. He wanted to know everything, experience everything: the suburban Maryland villages they were passing through, patches of forest, bridges, Chesapeake Bay, even the clouds and rain and water splashing along the road. He wanted to learn everything about his three new friends. But then his muscles relaxed, and fatigue descended upon him, and he fell asleep with his head against the damp window.

 

******

 

Jarod came to an hour later with aching shoulders and slimy cold from the waist down, although someone had put Caroline's nice warm hat on his head. His fellow travelers were having some sort of ... discussion? Argument? He sat back and listened, and tried to determine what on earth they were talking about.

"So obviously Vel is Velma and you're Daphne, so what does that make me and Jarod? With that Snickers bar, obviously he's Shaggy."

"Or Scooby. He is a little puppy dog-like."

"Well, _I'm_ the handsome one, so _clearly_ I'm Fred." This was met with derisive snorts from the female passengers.

"I would dispute that, and argue that not only is Jarod hotter, he's probably better at devising traps too. On the basis of no evidence." They all laughed.

"Hey, wait, how come you are assuming Vel is Velma just because of her name? Are you saying I'm the ditzy one and Vel is the ugly one?"

"That's true, after all I _am_ the only one is the car that has a boyfriend." Velma glanced over at Jarod. "That we know of." She noticed he was awake, and curled up a corner of her mouth in a smirk.

"Seriously, Vel, how is it that you are not a bulldyke lesbian? Aren't you betraying womynkind and supporting society's pervasive patriarchy by dating Eric?"

"I know, I know, it's complete hypocrisy. Except that I do like the cock."

"Hard to argue with that," Jonathan deadpanned, and they laughed again.

"Hey, Jarod's up from his little catnap, maybe we should stop for breakfast. Your cousin's not expecting us until after noon anyway. What do you say, Jarod? You look like you could use something more substantial than candy for breakfast."

Jarod, mentally filing away the words _Scooby, bulldyke, cock_ and _catnap_ to ask about later, concurred. They were on the outskirts of Washington DC at that point, and pulled over at truck stop diner. As they all entered the restaurant and sat down, Jarod noticed they seemed be attracting unwanted attention.

"Why are some of these men staring at us?"

"Probably not us," replied Velma, motioning to herself and Caroline. " _You_ two."

Jonathan looked up and appeared to notice for the first time. "Oh sorry man, you're wearing my clothes. We're still in bumfuck America here, they've probably never seen anyone who's _flamboyant_ in here before."

Jarod frowned, sensing that he was not getting the subtext of the situation. Their attire was unusual compared to what everyone else was wearing, but that did not explain the undercurrent of hostility directed toward them. He needed more information. "Are our clothes violating some sort of social norm?"

"You could say that. I'm _gay_ , Jarod. A homosexual. And so are you, as long you continue to wear that jacket, as far as anyone who sees you knows."

"And it is unacceptable for someone who is homosexual to eat breakfast in a restaurant?"

Jonathan chuckled at that. "Well look at us, clearly we are an affront to masculinity everywhere. My God Jarod, take a look in the mirror sometime. It's enough to bring even the most pussy-loving trucker over to the dark side." He paused for a moment. "Although maybe not with that hat on."

Velma finally broke in. "Hey guys, will it be possible to eat my French toast without having to save your asses from some redneck? I'm hungry, let's order."

Jarod diverted his attention from the intriguing social interactions to the diner menu. Suddenly he realized he was encountering yet another new difficulty, one that would be a challenge to hide from his new friends. There was only one thing on the menu he definitively recognized: Milk. Everything else may as well have been in a foreign language. He knew a few basic foodstuffs in the abstract, like _egg_ , _turkey_ , and _strawberry_ , but how to translate something like _chicken-fried steak with sausage gravy, two eggs cooked to order, hash browns and your choice of biscuits or toast_? He couldn't even tell whether the dish actually contained chicken. It sounded like a lot of food. On the plus side, he now had an idea how much meals cost.

The others all ordered coffee and their meals, then the waitress turned to him. "I'm not sure. What do you recommend?"

"Sweet or savory, honey?"

"Ummm ... sweet?" That sounded good.

"The strawberry waffles are mighty fine." Jarod nodded his head, and the waitress wandered off.

Velma excused herself to use the restroom, and Jarod followed her ... right into the women's room. To the laughter of Caroline and Jon, she shoved him back out and pointed out the symbols on the doors. "Females. Males. Got it, Martian?"

When they both got back to the table, Jon leaned in. "Okay, Jarod, you've got to tell us. We've got money riding on it now. Caroline's betting you grew up in a cult, while I've got crazy religious fundamentalists. Which is it?"

"He's from the Centre." Velma sat down and spoke quietly, serious for once.

"What the fuck is the Centre?"

"Creepy supposed think tank out of Blue Cove. You know, a few miles from where we picked him up? I've lived outside Sanderson since the eighth grade, and half the kids there have a parent that works at the Centre. The adults all act like they'll get a bullet to the brain if they say shit-all about what they do, so naturally the rumors fly. They say that, as big as the building is on the surface, that there's twenty times more secret space underground. They say that they keep children locked away down there for illegal psychological experiments. They say that the Centre has tentacles everywhere, influencing the highest levels of government and has a worldwide network of offices and training facilities.

"You know what I think? That what they say is at least a little bit right. What do you say, Jarod?"

Jarod looked alternatingly terrified and pained. "Look ... I don't want to get you in trouble. There are people that will be chasing me. Maybe I should just go."

"Wow. I'll take that as a yes. Why will they chase you? What have you been doing for them that is so valuable?"

He didn't know what to say. It sounded insane: _I'm a genius that can become anyone I want to be._ Or: _I've been trained_ _since I was four_ _to simulate reality better than any computer._ Or even: _I just spent_ _nine_ _months working on secret_ _military_ _recommendations about Iran._ But his reluctance to give them details about his upbringing went deeper than that. It was as if he had a fresh start on life, and did not want to be treated like a freak of nature. He wanted to experience what it was like to be a normal young adult, even if that meant, in effect, Pretending to be average.

"Velma is right. Psychological experiments on children. They want me back because I had access to classified information. I really just want to move on with my life, if that's all right." He could tell from the expression on their faces that this was a completely inadequate explanation.

Jonathan glanced at the others in the awkward silence. "Okay, I won't press too much, since you obviously don't want to talk about it. But can you just bottom line it for us? You were being held prisoner, is that what you are saying?" Jarod reluctantly nodded. "And now you've escaped, but don't know anything about popular culture in the outside world?" He nodded again. "Well my friend, now you HAVE to come with us to Portland. Because there is a whole fabulous universe to be educated in, and we will teach you."

Velma rolled her eyes. "Oh lord, you've created a monster."

"Hey, I said 'we'. Feel free to inculcate him in your scrotum-crushing feminist propaganda."

Jarod smiled at their tacit acceptance. "I would love to learn anything from any of you. Thank you."

The waitress arrived then with their breakfasts. Jarod's turned out to be a giant 14-inch waffle piled high with a mountain of whipped cream, two scoops of vanilla ice cream and a lake of syrupy strawberries in the crater. They all began to laugh and shake their heads when they saw the dish, as big as a pie.

"My first piece of advice," said Caroline, "is to not eat everything on that plate. You'll regret it later."

He scooped up a bit of ice cream and strawberry syrup and stuffed it into his mouth. Then his eyes rolled back in his head.. Everyone laughed again.

"I think he just had his first orgasm."

"Seriously, after being stuck in a cell for twenty-odd years? That comment just proves how little you know about the male species. Okay, Jarod, next lesson ... _bacon_. Mmmm."


	3. Party like it's 1979

Five days later they finally rolled into Chicago, just in time for New Year's. "Lola," the VW bus, required some work, which gave Jarod a chance to extensively study auto mechanics from Jonathan's cousin in Reston. He learned to drive, learned to make an omelet, learned where to buy used clothes and shoes, learned how to do his own laundry. He read a work of fiction solely because he liked the title, then read a work of philosophy solely so he could argue about its contents with Velma. He listened to several cassette tapes because Caroline liked the music, and attended something called a Hitchcock movie marathon with Jonathan, where they were stared at yet again. He was given solemn and contradictory tips on how to pick up the opposite sex, and the same sex, and recognize and/or fend off advances from either. And with equal seriousness was warned how much this would be necessary given his looks, which he tolerated but did not believe.

One day he took a train into DC with the intention of visiting the Smithsonian. After wandering through Air and Space he realized that a museum was little more than a simulation, and he was already depressingly familiar with the Apollo capsules and WWII bombers. The people on the train were far more interesting, and he ended up crisscrossing the District on the subway, watching: the mother struggling with a stroller and groceries and three kids, men in suits reading newspapers and authoritatively ignoring everyone around them, a middle aged couple flirting with each other without ever looking the other, an exhausted student about to flunk some sort of test. He helped the mother off the train and and meandered around in the frigid air in an obviously impoverished neighborhood, marveling at the range of human behavior on display.

He felt aimless, lonely even sometimes, like he had still not found his life's purpose. It was as if his brain could not decompress and relax, but it didn't have anything to latch onto and focus either. And then something wonderfully new would happen in front of him, and he would stop to revel in it and absorb it, and not feel quite so detached from those around him. He wanted to call Sydney and talk about it all, tell him he was alive and trying to live. Sydney would be worried about him, but he would also tell him that all his anomie and confusion was a sign he didn't belong on the outside and needed to come "home," and Jarod couldn't endure hearing that yet.

At last the caravan departed for the long trek west. They stopped at a friend's house in Ann Arbor overnight, and pushed on to Chicago midday on the 31st. They were camping out at Velma's boyfriend Eric's home in the northern suburbs, and it was his rather wealthy friend that was hosting the evening's festivities. Jarod was delighted to see how Velma reacted to meeting up with her boyfriend; it was like her entire personality was subtly altered, becoming more happy and less sarcastic.

The party -- more of an impromptu club, really -- was held in a converted, decorated warehouse space southwest of the city's skyline. Jonathan had lent Jarod some of his less flashy clothes for the evening, and they arrived at 9:30 to find the celebration already well under way. The five of them, Velma's boyfriend included, strolled up to the bar for a toast before splitting up.

"To the Eighties: May they be less shitty than the Seventies. Things can only go up from here." Jarod wasn't so sure about that last overly optimistic statement, but he clinked glasses with the rest of them and even tasted a tiny amount, despite his gut-level revulsion at all mind-altering substances.

"All right boys and girls, I'm off for some debased hedonism. I'll call you tomorrow from ... somewhere?" He eyed the other guests appreciatively as they walked by. "Jarod. At least _try_ to get laid, okay man? It'd be good for you. You need to chill out a bit and enjoy yourself."

"Don't you think it would a good idea to maybe use some ... protection?"  
"What for, when there's zero percent chance of some little Jons running around nine months later? Oh, what's a little syphilis between friends? That's why antibiotics were invented."

Jarod could think of a dozen sexually transmitted diseases that were not caused by bacteria, and therefore unaffected by antibiotics. He sensed that his friend would be unpersuaded, however. Jonathan took the nearly untouched drink out of his hand and downed it, flashed them all a brilliant smile goodnight, and ambled after a lovely blond gentleman staring at him from a corner.

Velma and Eric also wandered off to socialize with some friends of the host of the party. Which left Jarod and Caroline alone.

Caroline was the shyest person in the group, and was also prone to carsickness and ended up doing the bulk of the driving. As a result, Jarod had spoken to her the least of the three. Being abandoned by her friends at a party such as this didn't seem to be something she would find particularly fun, Jarod thought. "Do you want to be here? We really don't have to stay if you are uncomfortable."

"No, its okay, let's walk around and maybe do some dancing until the ball drops. Staying at home on New Year's is kind of pathetic for a college student, it's good to get out and experience something new, you know?"

"I've never danced before, maybe you can show me how to do it properly?"

She smiled at that. "Sure. Although I think actual technique was lost in the sixties, now people pretty much just shimmy any way they feel like to the beat. My parents' generation, they really knew how to dance. They like to square dance, and although it's considered old-fashioned, I always secretly thought it looked like loads of fun."

They walked around and checked out the party. It was an enormous space, with three main divided rooms, and a separate area upstairs that was formerly a series of offices. The three dance rooms each had a bar and food served, but they all had a different types of music playing, so the overall vibe was completely different from room to room. One room was devoted to disco, with a flashy ball, some dancing, and a lot of heavy drinking. In another room some very noisy rock music was being played, which Caroline described as "heavy metal." This area seemed to be a locus of harder drug activity, which made Jarod shudder. The final room had the most dancing with varying levels of alcohol- and marijuana-influenced sobriety, and was playing "chipper pop songs and oldies." Jarod thought it was the most enjoyable-appearing environment.

Upstairs there wasn't any formal music blaring. People had simply commandeered the space for a variety of semi-private sexual and drug activities. Jarod told Caroline that she seemed much more nonplussed by everything going on around them than he would have guessed.

"Ha, I was going to say the same about you. If you want to see an orgy you should come visit us at Reed during Renn Fayre. See what happens when a bunch of really smart and creative people all get high and let loose at the same time. Some of that crazy shit is planned months in advance, it's unbelievable. Come one, let's find a window or fire escape or something, I need some air."

Jarod walked into a room he calculated was near the outside of the building ... and stopped in his tracks. On top of a desk was a completely naked woman, back towards the door. She had an incredible tattoo of a fire dragon encompassing almost all of her back, a beautiful multicolored, delicately shaded work of art that appeared to realistically move with every twitch of the woman's muscles. And move it did, for the tattooed woman was on her knees straddling the face of a clothed person of unclear gender, and was writhing and moaning in pleasure.

Caroline came in and suddenly stopped behind him as well. "Oh, wow," she murmured, although whether she was more impressed by the tattoo or the manner of sex, Jarod couldn't tell. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of the room, and in the hallway they both looked at each other and began to laugh.

They finally found a fire escape three rooms down, and climbed out into the bracing sub-freezing air. It felt good to be out of the stifling hazy air of the club, but also extremely cold without coats as well, so they huddled together for warmth. Caroline put her head on his shoulder and held his hand, and Jarod's mind, racing ahead as it was trained to do all those years, had a sudden premonition of what she intended to do. He wasn't sure how he felt about it, whether he should put a stop to things now and go back inside, or sit here and see what she wanted to do.

She lifted her head and gazed at him a few seconds, assessing his mood, then leaned forward and kissed him. It was soft and sensual, and to his surprise he began to respond. He wanted to know what it felt like, this kissing thing -- as an adult at least, age eleven didn't count -- and having felt it, he wanted more. They kissed slowly, unhurried by any pressure, and after awhile Caroline let go of his hand and began to rub him through his pants. This too felt immensely good, and he let her stroke him for a minute, just to revel in the sensation.

But then Jarod suddenly realized that he didn't want to do this. He liked Caroline, but he certainly didn't love her, and wasn't sure whether he was even attracted to her. He was kissing her just for the sheer experience of it, not because it was _her_. It was like using someone, in a way, something he couldn't abide. So he broke off and gently took her hand away. "I'm sorry, I ... I don't think I'm ready for this."

She looked disappointed for an instant, but only an instant. "It's okay, no worries Jarod," and went back to resting her head on his shoulder. They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, watching the traffic and Chicago skyline.

"This person you're trying to find at Stanford ... it's a girl, right?"

"Yeah. Although I don't know if she even remembers me, it's been a long time."

"Oh, trust me, she'll remember you. Just for the record, you are a natural kisser. Lucky girl. Come on, let's go flail about to some cheesy pop music until midnight. Then you can take me home."

They went back downstairs to the dance floor, and Jarod discovered flailing about was an enormous amount of fun, alcohol or no. Jonathan even came in at one point and gave them a big thumbs up when he saw how much they were enjoying themselves. They laughed and danced and generally acted silly, and Jarod felt more free than he had since emerging in the outside world.

 

 

******

 

It took a couple more weeks, but Jarod eventually made it down to Palo Alto and the nearby Stanford campus. He traveled with the Reedies all the way across the continent to Portland. They had a network of friends to stay with every night, and accumulated more passengers until the bus was stuffed to capacity for the final leg around the Cascade mountains. Lola had chugged along through Midwestern snowstorms and high Rocky Mountain passes, but died finally in the Columbia Gorge, a mere 100 miles from their destination. Jarod impressed everyone by repairing the vehicle with water and duct tape, putting his lessons with Jonathan's cousin to good use.

He hung out at Reed for a few days, familiarizing himself with the mores of a college campus. Jarod rapidly discovered that if you looked and acted like a college student, everyone will simply assume you belong, and that included administration offices with private information he would need to acquire. At the start of the semester he finally bid his friends goodbye, sorely tempted to continue illicitly hiding out in their dorm rooms and maybe even crashing some courses for the fun of it, but he knew it was time to move on.

Jonathan and Eric taught him how to hitchhike, when and where to catch a ride and how to judge whether a driver seemed reputable enough to get into a car with. They had assured him that once on the West Coast it would be easy for a young man to get down south, which proved to be a correct assessment. There seemed to be an enormous number of college-aged people moving about that time of year, and many of them were more than willing to pick up an extra in exchange for some gas money.

Once at Stanford, he had to take a day to get his bearings. Jarod wasn't even a hundred percent sure she was here; it had been over two years ago he had asked Sydney about her and was told that she was attending here. For all he knew she had transferred, or was spending time abroad, or even that Sydney had lied to him or was misinformed. He had plenty of time on the trip to consider what an insane plan this was, that he was practically walking straight into the hands of the Centre again. Rationally he knew he should stay away from her, perhaps try and find his family or simply make a new life as distant from his tortured childhood as possible. But he couldn't let it go. She was the only person out of his entire life he ever wanted to meet again, so he had to try, even if it ended with her giving him a blank look and slamming the door in his face.

Jarod bluffed his way into the personnel office, something surprisingly easy to accomplish. Sydney and company always told him he could become anyone he wanted to be, but out in the real world he was still amazed that people didn't see right through him. Apparently there was something to being a genius after all. He quickly flipped through their student directory, and lo and behold, Parker was listed. She had an off-campus address within easy walking distance, and by cross-referencing he found she was living with two other junior-year coeds.

He walked over to the area, but as he approached he was forced to quickly jump behind some bushes. In front of the house was a parked car with two men in suits, clearly sweepers monitoring her residence. He took a look around and decided to try approaching from the back, which he could access from a neighboring house without being seen.

Jarod crept around to the back door and lightly knocked. A young woman -- not Parker, one of the housemates apparently -- opened the door with raised eyebrows at his unorthodox approach.

"Um, hi, I'm looking for Miss Parker?" He wasn't sure if she was actually using her first name again, or if she ever had.

The girl turned and shouted at the top of her lungs, "HEY PARKER! SOME HOTTIE IS SNEAKING AROUND BACK ASKING FOR YOU!" Jarod winced and began to scan furtively for sweeper activity.

A stunning young woman came to the back door, and it took Jarod a second to realize it actually was her, so radically changed was her appearance from the adolescent girl he remembered. It had been seven years since they had last laid eyes on each other.

"Jarod? The _fuck_. Get in here before my father's sweepers see you." And she grabbed him by his shirt and yanked him inside.


	4. Parker family Christmas

Miss Parker spent the Christmas of 1979 in much the same way as she had the previous two years, camping out in some pretty boy's opulent home in the Mediterranean, waiting for Daddy to call. He had canceled meeting with her at the last minute, but she was used to that by now and habitually made other plans. This year it was a exquisite charmer called Benitto, whose parents owned some sort of shipping business and spent Christmas at a villa near Florence. Parker wasn't the sort of girl a conservative young man sprung as a surprise on his parents at the holidays, but Parker wheedled and beguiled her way into it anyway. Italy was just so _lovely_ this time of year, even when it rained, and her father's position was such that no one would insult her to her face. So they called her _mia fami_ _g_ _lia_ and _mia figlia_ and made it perfectly clear she was to be absent from his life come Easter. Which suited Parker just fine.

Midnight on Christmas eve, no call. Midnight on Christmas proper, still no call. It was her tenth Christmas without her mother, and he couldn't even be bothered this time to pick up the phone. Shit, she needed a drink. There was a suspicious lack of hard liquor in this house but enough wine to drown a horse, so she would have to settle for that. He'd probably call when she headed back to Stanford next week for the semester. Maybe. Education was so important to her father.

So it was quite the surprise when Mr. Parker _did_ call, two days later.

"Angel! How was your Christmas? So sorry I couldn't make it this year, darling."

Parker was so shocked she started stammering. "Daddy? It's fine, daddy, of course Christmas was wonderful here in ..."

"That's great, Angel, happy to hear it. Listen. There's been an incident here at the Centre."

"Incident? Are you all right, daddy?"

"Hmm? Yes, yes, it's just that Jarod's run away."

"Jarod ... _escaped_?" For an instant she was sort of proud of him. They had kept him locked up like a lab monkey for the better part of two decades, so good for him for wanting a little freedom. Then it occurred to her to wonder why her father was calling to tell her this bit of Centre gossip.

"Yes, we're a little worried he might try and find you. So we're sending a detail out to your house when you get back to school. For your protection."

What. The. Fuck. She was getting babysitters, because of _Jarod_? Sweepers who would very likely report back her decidedly non-angelic lifestyle, and possibly rat out Reyna as well, with even more dire consequences? _Fuck_. "Daddy, Jarod would never do anything to hurt me. I really don't think this is necess ..."

"Centre security thinks differently, and I agree. You will call me immediately of course, if he tries to contact you?"

She could tell the question wasn't a question, and that there would be no convincing him. "Of course I will."

"Good. He's a valuable Centre asset that we cannot afford to lose. I know Jarod was your friend when you were young, Angel, but you must do this for me."

Ah. So the sweepers were there to catch Jarod if he dared to show up. She was bait, nothing more. Good to know Daddy trusted her to do the right thing. After getting off the phone with her father, Parker dialed the operator and began barking orders in Italian for an international call. She needed to tell Reyna the bad news.

 

******

 

Parker had met Reyna her first week at freshman orientation. Reyna was the second generation offspring of a newly wealthy oil sheik from the United Arab Emirates. Her father, one of the younger sons, had been shipped off to Oxford in his youth and had come home with some newfangled Western notions of education for his favorite and only daughter. She was Parker's darker counterpart in virtually every way: tall, leggy, gorgeous, mouthy, impeccably dressed, and rich.

It was hate at first sight.

They both instinctively recognized that they were competing for the same pool of available men. The tens, of which there was naturally a limited supply on campus, the beautiful, athletic, well-connected young things, preferably wealthy although that could be overcome with other attributes. They managed to avoid each other for a month, until they both inadvertently ended up at the same Kappa Phi party, holding court at opposite ends of the room and glowering at each territorially. Then Parker noticed someone slipping Reyna a roofie, and proceeded to kick the would-be rapist's ass, followed by some of his more delicate body parts. The incident made Parker an instant legend on campus, and after that she and Reyna became fast friends. Cooperative divide and conquer was a more effective strategy than competition anyway, and the two of them practically had the school in the palms of their hands by the end of the year.

As it turned out, Reyna was hell-bent on enjoying her few precious years of American liberation, a mission Parker wholeheartedly supported. Reyna knew her fate was to be married off advantageously at her father's convenience, and and wanted to experience the almost full range of hedonistic pleasures while holding out on the concept of technical virginity. On more than one occasion, Parker had to silently thank the stars that, as much as she had Daddy issues, at least she wasn't going to be ordered to breed like a prize mare.

After freshman year they hatched a plan to live off-campus, all the better to live up to their burgeoning sybaritic reputations in relative privacy. They needed another female companion to appear legit, however, and settled on Tech Support, Reyna's improbably lucky freshman roommate, who worshiped Reyna's glamour with an obsession that bordered on homoerotic. Tech Support's real name was Christine, but Parker could never think of her as anything but Tech Support. She was the sole member of Stanford's computer science department that didn't have a penis, a mousy five of a girl that could be a seven with a little dressing up but couldn't be bothered by the effort. At first Parker thought her obvious attachment to Reyna was due to the occasional boys flung down to her as Reyna's effective wingman. It turned out, however, that being a five in a world surrounded by geeky ones made her a queen in her own universe, and she didn't need Reyna to get laid at all. No, Tech Support just liked to watch the pretty popular girls work their charms, with much the same fascination as a zoologist observing two tigers mate.

Parker gave Reyna and Tech Support the barest amount of information about the Jarod situation, namely that the spies were there looking for a certain young man, and if a mystery man did show up he was to be delivered to Parker herself, not the spies. Reyna took one look at the sweeper detail and gleefully declared it would be her personal challenge to carry on with their amorous lives without tipping them off. Tech Support had glanced at the car across the street, shrugged her shoulders and continued to tie up the phone line with her computer doohickey.

Parker had to give some serious thought to what she should do if Jarod did appear. There was her promise to her father to turn him in, of course, something she had no desire to do, and not just because she was still pissed at Daddy for forgetting her at Christmas. It was hard not to remember that she had liked Jarod once upon a time, as her friend at a point in her life when she didn't have a lot of friends. He was one of the very few individuals she had ever met who had always been utterly, guilelessly open and honest with her. And she sure as hell remembered that he had liked her back. Really, who wouldn't under those circumstances? They had dangled her in front of the poor boy like she was some sort of sexual lollipop to be licked. When she was _ten_. After that every time she had sneaked down there to talk to him, he had given her a certain smile, like he was deliriously happy to merely be standing in her presence. A smile for her and her alone.

So when a few days after classes began Tech Support hollered up the stairs about some "hottie" at the back door, Parker had a sudden premonition, _knew_ instantly, that it was him. Whether his presence was indicative of balls or stupidity, she still couldn't say. She ran down the stairs and dragged him to relative safety inside the den of female iniquity, where sweepers were barred from treading.

They both stood there a few seconds, silently staring at each other, attempting to grasp the fact that puberty had been very, very kind to the both of them. Jarod looked to her like the world's most fuckable puppy dog, despite wearing rags from Goodwill and clearly sleeping with the bushes or unwashed hippies or something. He was a head taller than her now, lean and muscular, his face much more angled and chiseled. His beautiful eyes were the same, however. Tech Support glanced up and squinted at this completely uncharacteristic display of speechlessness from Parker. Then Jarod finally spoke.

"Hello Miss Parker, thanks for letting me inside." And of course he smiled. _Her_ smile, which made him look even more incredible. At that instant she knew she wouldn't turn him in. Some things come before even Daddy and the Centre.

She couldn't help smile back, but also couldn't help be distracted by certain other new characteristics. "Your voice ... changed."

"Oh, right, that happened a few years ago," he said absentmindedly, like he was talking about his toenails.

 _And now you sound like sex_ _hit the chocolate_ _ice cream_ _truck_ _._ She chose not to articulate that thought at this juncture. At that moment Reyna bounded down the stairs, realizing the mystery man was in the house. Jarod's eyes widened slightly as he saw her, a common male reaction upon seeing Her Exoticness for the first time, then went back to staring at Parker.

"Uh, Parker, introduce us to your friend?"

"Right. These are my housemates Reyna and Te-- uh, Christine. This is Jarod, a _very_ old friend."

Jarod smiled and shook everyone's hands, and then it was Reyna's turn to look bedazzled. She turned to glance at Parker, and a whole range of silent communication flowed between them in a manner of seconds.

Eyes widened, smirky smile. _Holy hell, you neglected to mention he'd look like he could walk onto a movie set._

Shrug. _Well it's been awhile, he's been upgraded to_ _the_ _premium model since I last saw him._

Raised eyebrows _._ _Are you sure you *must* keep_ _him_ _all to yourself?_

Eyes narrow to slits _._ _Don't_ _you_ _fuck with me on this one, bitch._

Hands up, stands back _._ _Okay, okay, chill out chica, message received._

Jarod watched this exchange with open interest. She wondered how much of it he had grasped. Probably quite a lot, much more than the average male; it was after all the sort of thing Sydney had trained him to do since he was practically an embryo.

"Guys, I need to speak with Jarod. Alone." The other girls knew a command when they heard one, and reluctantly vacated the kitchen. She looked at him and crossed her arms in mock askance. "Jarod, what the hell are you doing here? Didn't your genius forecasting skills tell you that this is the first place they were going to look?"

He smiled at her again, a different smile, softer and more knowing. "It's good to see you too, Miss Parker. And yes, I thought it was likely there would be sweepers here. Are you going to turn me in?"

"You mean, betray you and send you back to being a lab rat for the rest of your life, is that it? Do you really think I could do that?"

"Yes. You could do it. I can't tell yet if you will." His voice was very soft.

She sighed and tipped her head back, evaluating him. She had already made up her mind, but she wanted to hear him say it, say why she should stick her neck out for him and risk a heaping shit-ton of disapproval from her father falling down on her head were he to find out. "Explain it to me. Explain why you shouldn't go back. What are you going to do out here in this sorry excuse for a world that's so much more important than what you've been doing back home at the Centre?'

"I don't know yet. I just want to live my life without having every minute of the day proscribed and recorded. I gave the Centre the chance to treat me like a human being, and they chose instead to treat me like an office chair. Like I'm their _property_. I refuse to be anyone's slave anymore, Miss Parker. No one owns me. Not your father, not Sydney, not anyone." He looked more agitated and pissed off than she had ever seen him outside a simulation. Yet again she was a little bit proud of him, for sticking up for himself, for not being such an obedient trained monkey.

"I suppose you want to stay here for awhile, then."

Jarod's eyes lit up, for he now knew which way she had decided. Puppy dog again. "Can I? Or at least take a shower and a nap?" Now _there_ was an image. God, it was going to take major vigilance to keep Reyna's claws off him.

Parker waved her hand. "Sure, Brainiac, just avoid the front windows as you go up the stairs. Bathroom's second door on the right. Oh, and watch out for Reyna, she would totally blow you for that 'I'm not property' speech." He actually blushed a little, as she knew he would. Then she realized that if he knew what "blow you" meant, then _somebody_ had been teaching him a few things.

She gave him her broadest, most evil smile. Life was about to get cursed with interesting times. And fun.


	5. Friendly intentions

Jarod let the blastingly hot water run over his back, his head leaning against the tile while he tried to think things over. He had always used the shower as a place to decompress in privacy, physically and mentally. The privacy part may have been illusionary, but at the Centre he had to take what he could get, and at least they had the decency to be subtle about it. They generally let him bathe at the very end of the day, after Sydney had gone home, and there was a standing order that he was allowed to take as long as he wanted, so long as it wasn't very late and he had to up again early the next morning. Sydney seemed to realize that he needed time to put his mind back together after every sim, and sometimes his body too, as physiological changes often accompanied the sims along with plain old stress and injuries. It was an old problem they had been working on since the beginning, the necessity of reintegrating his personality after hours or days mimicking someone else. He could be anyone he wanted to be, but what was he in between? As he got older he had steadily improved at switching back to his "true" identity, but sometimes it felt like the Pretends bled into him, like watercolors seeping into paper and spreading far from where they were applied.

One thing he could say about the simulations, though: Sooner or later, they always came to an end. He could take his shower, wall off the latest persona or problem, and retool his mind for the next thing. Not so his current dilemma, as it involved real life, from which neither he nor anyone else could escape forever. He had run sims in his mind many times of what the world would be like on the outside, trying to take every scrap of information he had to help guide him on how to live a life without regimentation. However, he found he had severely underestimated the role of sex in the lives of his fellow young adults, and his own discomforted response to it.

Contrary to the impression of those around him, Jarod wasn't a complete naif. They made him do Marilyn Monroe when he was _nine_ for goodness sake. He was well versed in both the physical and psychological aspects of sex, in the abstract at least. As he observed everyone around him, he could practically hear Sydney's voice drone on about hormones and the physiology of attraction, the evolutionary imperative to find a mate and reproduce, socioeconomic signals in mate selection, the role of symmetry and other physical markers of reproductive fitness in unconscious perceptions of beauty, etc, etc. It was one thing to have all of these notions running in the background of his mind as he was conducting a Pretend, then shoving it to a dim corner of his brain later. It was quite another to have constant sexual advances made against him by real people he had no control over, no matter how disinterested he acted. Jarod had also picked up the cultural expectation that a "normal" twenty-one year old American male was to be sexually receptive at all times, a notion his fellow twenty-somethings seemed to be enthusiastic defenders of. Clearly he was the abnormal one.

The situation in Parker's house was bringing things to a head for Jarod. Within five minutes of his arrival, all three of the women had shown signs of sexual attraction to him, even the plainer one with the modem he wanted to borrow. He knew he was supposed to find that to be some sort of compliment, but all it did was make him extremely uncomfortable. He loved seeing Parker again, loved hearing her bluntness and bossiness, loved everything about the idea of getting to know her as an adult. But he didn't know if he could live here with constant sexual tension, especially as it was likely to lead to strife with the other housemates.

He tried to analyze what he wanted from the situation. Why had he really come here, risking obvious capture? It wasn't just because he was lonely and looking for a familiar face. The Reedies knew enough about him for that, and he could have stayed up in Portland and done quite well. Was he attracted to Parker? He thought so ... maybe? Yes? He couldn't tell anymore, couldn't tell the difference between the truth of their old relationship, his fantasies about it in the intervening seven years, and the new supposedly grown-up reality they currently inhabited.

Friends, he decided. They should rekindle their friendship first before doing anything else. For all they knew, maybe they didn't even like each other as people anymore.

 

******

 

 _JUST ... BE ... FRIENDS?!_ _Did those words really just come out of Jarod's mouth?!,_ thought an incredulous Parker. Maybe the rumors were true, the Centre really did have him neutered. There was no other rational explanation. He was _reject_ _ing_ her. No one rejected her, not for long anyway. He couldn't be serious.

She looked at his face. He was serious.

The bitch of it was, she hadn't even been planning on coming at him full steam. Even Parker recognized that after spending most of his life in Sydney's freaky underground lair, sans most female contact, a man needed some time to adjust. She had been looking forward to the slow build, finding all those little teachable moments and working them in. But preempting her with "just be friends" was practically throwing down the gauntlet.

Parker sank down on one their armchairs, and crossed her amazing legs while resting them up on the coffee table, spiked heels and all. "Okay, Jarod, far be it from me to talk you into something you don't want to do. But at least tell me _... why_?" The other girls watched this turn of events with rapt fascination. Tech Support looked like she wanted to grab a lab notebook and popcorn.

"I just think we should get to know each other again before jumping into anything. We don't know much about each other, really."

Parker took this in, along with the eager look on his face, and considered the situation. For all her aggressiveness and not insignificant narcissism, she was in fact good at reading people, when she bothered to put some effort into it. She could instinctively tell that Jarod would never be swayed by increasing the volume of her sexual signals. That seemed to be part of what was bothering him. She needed to appeal to reason and his boundless curiosity, which would at least chip away at his resolve. Teachable moments indeed.

"Okay, but does that have to preclude flirting? Flirting's one of the great pleasures in life, Jarod. You'll be missing out."

"I'm ... not sure I know what that entails."

"It involves light sexual innuendo with no pressure of any immediate follow-up activities, merely the vague implication that something might, someday, happen in the future."

"And this is ... fun?

"Anticipation's always a major hard-on, Jarod. See how much you need to learn? I tell you what. You let us girls teach you --- strictly platonicly, of course -- while you get your fill of 'getting to know each other.' Then we'll see where things stand. Agreed?"

Jarod had always had a hard time discerning when she was mocking him, but decided to just take that at face value. It sounded a lot like what the Reedies had told him when they picked him up three weeks ago, and he had in fact absorbed an enormous amount from them. "That seem reasonable. I do like to learn new things."

"Excellent. In that case, Father Jarod, if you insist on keeping to this vow of self-imposed celibacy, I'm going up to change my clothes. No point in wearing these shoes if there is zero chance of seducing you tonight."

She got up to go upstairs, leaving Jarod to wonder aloud to the other two, "What does height extension have to do with potential seduction?"

Tech Support behind him was barely able to keep a straight face. "Dude, you are _so_ doomed."

 

******

 

After Parker marched upstairs to put on her nightclothes, Jarod realized how hungry he ws getting, and wandered into the kitchen to figure out how to make himself something to eat. He was immediately relieved that Miss Parker had agreed to his suggestion so readily, and the housemates seemed to be going along with it as well. Now he felt he had the breathing space to do some planning about his future, and a tiny bit less like hunted prey, despite the sweepers sitting not a hundred feet away. It helped to have a home base for awhile, to not be constantly moving around on some ersatz quest. Step one: Find a job. He was down to his last fifty dollars, despite copious hitchhiking and crashing at new found friends' homes. Step two: Acquire practical skills for everyday living. Step three: Research his family and history at the Centre, to determine if he had any surviving relatives. He also felt he had a duty to check up on their use of his sims, to make sure nothing was being commandeered for destructive purposes. Step four: Think of ways of putting his unique abilities to work helping others, or maybe humanity at large. It wouldn't hurt to think big.

He decided to put aside step one for now -- he had some ideas that Christine might be able to help him with in the future -- and focus on step two. Dinner. Jarod had no idea how to cook for himself, having always been handed his meals at the Centre and no opportunity to learn while constantly on the road. He rummaged around Parker's kitchen and found very little to work with, mainly breakfast cereal and fruit, but deep in a cupboard he dug up something called "Rice-a-Roni" that had convenient step-by-step instructions printed on the box. He also found some very authoritative-looking cookbooks that clearly had never before been cracked open, but would be helpful for study. There was "The Joy of Cooking" in a happy red cover, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by the cheerful-sounding Julia Child, and "Larousse Gastronomique," which turned out to be more massive encyclopedia than cookbook. Jarod sat down next to Christine's computer and began reading the latter while the rice was cooking. He was up to ALLEMANDE SAUCE when dinner finished up and Parker and Reyna walked in to see what he was doing. Reyna looked at the encyclopedia, then looked at the Rice-a-Roni box.

"Uh, that seems pretty ambitious for a boxed rice man."

Parker grinned. "Give him a few days, we'll probably be swimming in gourmet food." Somehow she had forgotten about that until this moment, Jarod's legendary ability to vacuum up information and become an expert in the blink of an eye. She had seen snippets of simulations, but had never witnessed him doing the whole thing directly, from the beginning.

Reyna frowned, watching Jarod fly at unnatural speeds through the book. He was already working on ANCHOVY. "Who is this guy, Parker?"

 _Our personal servant if we play our cards right_ , thought Parker, but she decided against articulating this. Jarod had been used for his abilities all his life, so it seemed dubious to turn around and immediately start manipulating him for the same ends. Still, she wasn't going to object if he made French cookery a project. "Jarod's just someone that's known for learning new skills extremely quickly."

"Known by who?"

Jarod and Parker exchanged a glance, the secret of their long strange childhood flowing between them. He shrugged and put the ball in her court as to what she wanted to tell her friends. "My father's company," she finally said in a flat voice that conveyed she wasn't going to reveal much more on the matter.

"You mean, the people that have had thugs outside of our house for two weeks looking for him? That's some company dedication there." Neither one of them said a word. Finally Reyna crossed her arms and said, "Fine. I guess you won't care if I go out there and mention that their _employee_ is standing in the kitchen."

"Please don't do that." Jarod spoke very softly, not pleading but insistent.

"Well, what? Did you steal corporate secrets or something?"

"Yes. I stole myself."

 _"Jarod"_ hissed Parker. She shook her head at what a terrible idea it was, to tell Reyna anything like the truth. He sighed in response.

"Look. We don't want to tell you the story because there is a possibility you could be in danger if you knew the truth. But know that I didn't do anything wrong. I just don't want to work for them anymore. All right? You won't tell them I'm here? Please."

"That depends. Tell me what you can do. She said you can learn things extremely quickly, what does that mean?" She crossed her arms, in defiance of the daggers shooting out of Parker's eyes telling her to _shut the fuck up_.

Jarod flipped the book shut and slid it over to her. "Anything between ABAISSE and ANDOUILLE."

She turned back to the beginning of the tome. ABAISSE was indeed the first entry. "Uhhh ... AGAMI." She had never heard of it.

Jarod closed his eyes and began to recite. "Agami. Also known as Trumpeter. A bird of the wader family of which the _Guiana agami_ is a prototype. Its flesh has appreciable merit. The agami is used in cookery mainly in South America, boiled in consomme or ..."

"OK, I get it. Wow. Do you just memorize everything or can you do something with all that information?"

"No, I could make _agami a la chilienne_ now if we had the ingredients, although I'd have to look up some of the cross-references. I haven't finished reading the book yet. Are we good with the demonstration now?"

"Yeah, sure. I'll keep your secret, Jarod. Hey, do you know anything about physics? I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around some of this quantum shit."

Jarod smiled. _Do I know anything about physics?_ Only since he was five. "I'd be happy to take look at it with you if you'd like." He glanced at Parker, who was sitting by the phone with her own arms crossed now, glaring at him like lava was about to shoot out of the top of her head. He didn't care. To hell with Centre loyalty and Centre secrets. It was his brain and he'd use it if he wanted to. Besides, she was the one who mentioned gourmet meals to begin with.

Christine came in from her evening study group just at that moment, walking straight over to the stove and sampling what was in the pot. "Hey. This Rice-a-Roni is perfectly made." Then she surveyed the decidedly shifted vibe in the group from when she left. "What? Did I miss something good?"

 

******

 

Once Parker downed some Rice-a-Roni and Chardonnay-- a curiously not-terrible combination -- she found Jarod on the couch in the living room. They had tightly closed the curtains so he could walk freely around the house without being observed through the front windows. She sat down next to him, a little too close but in non-aggressive manner, she hoped. He was still working his was through Larousse, up to GRENACHE WINE.

"Sorry for almost blowing my top. It really never occurred to me you might actually want to _tell_ people who you are. I don't want my friends to become targets because of this. The Centre will never stop coming after you and yours if you keep revealing all their dirty little secrets."

"Will they ever stop coming after me, period? How long do think those sweepers will sit out there, until you graduate?" He shook his head and put the book down. "Look, I don't want to put anyone at risk. I've been pretty inconsistent about saying anything about my abilities, but it wears you out after awhile, hiding who you really are. I just want to be myself sometimes, but I'm not sure what exactly that is either."

"They've been training you to be other people your entire life, but you've always had your own strong personality, Jarod. Always. Even my mother mentioned it, before I even met you."

"She talked about me?" Catherine Parker had only come down to the sim lab a few times that Jarod could recall, and he couldn't think of a visit when he actually spoke more than three words directly to her. She mostly talked to Sydney, her psychiatrist. He remembered her long hair, her perfectly smart clothes, her gentle personality and kind smile. And of course, he remembered the day she died.

"She was worried about what they were making you do in the sims, you and the other children, I guess. I don't remember meeting any others besides Angelo. She thought it would traumatize you and damage your sense of self. She and Daddy had a huge argument over it, just before -- when we met. You remember that clusterfuck of an experiment."

"It was certainly memorable. I take it your mother was opposed to your participation?"

"What, having her sixth grader used as sexual bait? What parent could find that objectionable? Not Daddy, apparently." She took another sip of the wine and put her feet up on the table. Soft leather lace-up boots this time.

"Don't all those pointy shoes hurt your feet?"

She laughed softly and rested her head on his shoulder, mellowed. "Ah, but it's a good hurt, Jarod. Good in the sure knowledge that I can trample my enemies' hearts and gouge out their eyes with my Manolos, if need be."

"That's ... an interesting aspiration to have in life." She laughed again.

"Listen, Jarod, do you want to do something tomorrow? My classes end at noon at Fridays. Have you ever been to a beach?"

"I ran along the shoreline outside the Centre for six hours, but I've never stopped to enjoy a beach, no." In truth Jarod would have preferred to stay at the house and work on his plans the next day, having just spent weeks riding four thousand miles through the country. But since _she_ was the one who asked ... "That sounds like fun."

"Excellent. You haven't lived until you've driven 100 miles an hour down a California highway with the top down."

"Even _more_ fun."

 


	6. The storm

Racing along Route 1, ambient noise from the engine at least 140 eardrum-dripping decibels, misty rain whiplashing his face, Jarod was sure he was going die. He was okay with that. _Suicide by Lamborghini_ , not the worst thing to have as an epitaph. In his years at the Centre he had performed an enormous number of adrenaline-pumping simulations, from piloting jet fighters to battle modeling, but for all his fantastic imaginative ability none of it had felt one hundred percent real. He had always wanted to do something dangerous, something with actual consequences, for no other reason than to see what it felt like.

For her part, Parker was hyperfocused on not careening them off a cliff into the beautiful surf. However when she had time to consider the matter she was impressed that Jarod did indeed seem to be having fun, not nearly the namby-pamby stuffed shirt he sometimes appeared to be. He was so fixated on watching social situations that he frequently came off as shy and conservative, something she knew was a misread. It was exhilarating, not just controlling the magnificent machine, but being the agent that prodded him to let go of that oppressive self control for a few precious moments. She grinned and gunned it even faster, the Miura shuddering under the unprecedented strain.

The wind and rain really began to pick up as a winter storm front moved in off the Pacific, making control of the vehicle treacherous indeed. Parker finally pulled the car over at Gray Whale Cove state park -- commenting that it was "the opposite ass-end of the country, in every way, from that _other_ Cove" -- and they wobbled out of the car, into the rain, to find the beach before the sun went down. They walked a few hundred feet from the highway down to sea level through some brush, and came out at the sand near a small creek entering the ocean. The sun was low in the sky, not quite dusk, although it was hard to tell with the charcoal gray thunderclouds rolling towards shore. The wind and frenzied boulder-smashing surf and surreal black sunset clouds made the cove seem feral, wild, the perfect counterpart to the razored lethality of the drive that brought them there. They were the only ones crazy enough to be on the beach in such a storm.

They ambled down as close to the shore as they dared go, and finally ended up huddled together on a small outcropping, watching the waves crash on the boulders. Jarod's eyes were shining and alive, enraptured by the ferocious turmoil in front of them. It took every ounce of restraint Parker had to not to grab his damp face and start kissing him, to show him a _real_ feral display of nature.

At some point he noticed that she was watching him, not the storm. He turned to her and said in her ear -- the only way they were going to hear each other -- "Miss Parker, is this what you call flirting?"

The corner of her mouth tipped up, just a bit. "Flirting is in the eye of the beholder, so what do _you_ think? Freezing our asses off in the rain isn't the traditional method, no." He nodded and turned back towards the storm, but now watched her out of the corner of his eye as well. Parker responded by leaning into his ear, as if to speak but simply breathing on his neck for a few long drawn-out seconds. Then she finally whispered, "Okay, this might be flirting."

He smiled at that, an encouraging sign, but even so refused to look her in the eye or take the heavy hint. She took his hands in hers and started massaging them, to keep both of them warm. "Jarod, what's the real reason you took your Vow of Celibacy yesterday? You're not the only one who's good at reading people. I can tell your body wouldn't object if I kissed you right now. Why shouldn't we?"

Jarod started to shiver, and she knew they needed to get out of the rain. She wanted an answer to her question first, though.

He rubbed her slimy hands and stared at the violent sunset, the clouds now back lit close to the horizon. After a long pause, at last he replied. "Because of something like this. " He waved at the storm. "I'm afraid of losing myself, losing control. As if my body will want to do something, and my mind will have no choice but to follow."

"And that's ... bad? So what if you lose control? Having sex is just as fun as racing the 'ghini, except that the consequences are a lot less fatal if you lose it on a curve. Jarod,look at me." She gently turned his stubbly face towards her. He looked at her as if she were opening a gash in his soul, and he wanted nothing more than to escape, ashamed. "You are not just a brain that happens to have a hunk of meat attached. You are an _animal_. You and me and everyone else. Your body _matters_. It's okay to let it feel something besides punishment every once in awhile, and leave the obsessive self-reflection for another day."

He began to shiver even more violently, so she pulled him to his feet. "Come on, we can continue the psychoanalysis in the car. You need to get out of the weather. We should go shopping for a decent coat, you need one even in 'sunny' Cali."

They slipped up the muddy path back to the car. Parker couldn't help brood over the fact that Jarod was one of the most competent people she had ever met and was likely to ever meet, and yet seemed to be completely dissociated from some fairly vital areas of existence. It was starting to piss her off. What the hell had Sydney _done_ to him to teach him that he didn't deserve to enjoy his life?

They scrambled into the sports car, and Parker jammed on the heat to dry him out. Then she bashed the lights on and slammed the gas to get them out onto the highway again. As Jarod watched her aggressively abusing the car, he asked, "Are you angry with me?"

"Not _at_ you, _for_ you. What have they been telling you all these years, Jarod? That you can be anyone you want to be, except your own human being?"

"No one ever told me that in so many words, but ... it was made clear that my mind required a certain amount of guidance to keep from sinking into the simulations too deeply. Being out here in the world, sometimes it feels like a vast simulation with perfect clarity, that I'm losing control over. It's hard to know who I am or who I should try to be."

"I've got news for you, Jarod: Every single twenty-year-old on the planet has had the same thoughts. Nobody knows who they are or what they want to do. We all feel out of control over our own lives, and we all feel conflicted over whether we should follow the path our parents have planned for us."

"I can't even remember my parents anymore," Jarod said softly. "I don't even know enough to tell what path they would like me to take. They left me at the Centre, maybe that's what they wanted me to do with my entire life."

"You still have a choice, no matter what they intended. Have you thought about seeing if you have other family members still alive? Maybe there's an Aunt Bertha or someone who can at least tell you what they were like, give you a picture or something." They had only rarely discussed his parents when they were children, but she did remember how distressed he was that he didn't even have a photograph.

"I've ... thought about it. But ... what if they hate me? That's why no one ever came to visit me? My parents gave me away to that horrible place, where there is no comfort and no love. They _abandoned_ me. And the one time they come to see me they die. It's my fault they died, the son they didn't want to keep." He covered his face with his hands, trying unsuccessfully to hold in the tears. Parker didn't say anything for a few minutes, just let him let it out. Then she reached over a squeezed his hand. "You were just a little kid. It's not your fault they left you, and it's certainly not your fault they died. They're the ones who made the decisions they made. You didn't have a choice." Parker privately had her doubts about the story Jarod had been told about his parents. It was certainly convenient that the Centre's top lab rat had parents who were willing to give up custody of their genius son, then even more helpfully die in a plane crash. It didn't seem characteristic for Sydney to lie to Jarod, but perhaps Sydney had been lied to himself.

"I don't know. I feel unmoored. Maybe your mother was right. My sense of identity has been fractured, and now I need Sydney to patch me up. I haven't even called him to tell him I'm alive."

Parker snorted at this. "You seem to be functioning just fine without Daddy Freud, come on now. Come to campus sometime, you can see plenty of befuddled young souls medicating their way through life. You'll figure it out, no need to go shackle yourself back in the dungeon yet. And my mother wasn't exactly Little Miss Stable, now was she?"

"I wasn't aware she had significant mental problems, I'm sorry. I thought she saw Sydney because she wanted to talk to someone in private."

Parker turned and bored her eyes into him, a situation that made Jarod extremely nervous given that she was driving at night on a twisty road through a rainstorm. "You weren't _aware_ ... why the fuck do you think she shot herself practically in front of us? Who does that except batshit schizos?"

"Shot _herself_? She didn't commit suicide, what are you talking about? There were three shots and she screamed 'no'. Miss Parker, don't you _remember_?"

Jarod looked at her enraged, confused face and realized that she didn't remember. Or that her memories were so muddled with lies and pain that she could no longer recognize the truth. He could certainly guess on who had lied to her all of these years.

"Miss Parker, maybe you should pull ov ..."

"I'M FINE."

Neither one of them said another word for a few moments, Parker trying to hold herself together and process what he was saying, Jarod nervously keeping an eye on her driving. Finally Parker said in a low voice, "Do you really remember her saying 'no'?"

"Yeah." He didn't feel it was wise to mention just then that after Catherine Parker's death, and Sydney's rare blow-up at him at the funeral a few days later, Jarod mentally reran everything he had seen and heard and simmed it. He was convinced she had been assassinated, although he did not have enough information to determine by whom.

"Okay, well, I need to ask Daddy about it."

"Maybe you shouldn't run to your father? Just like I shouldn't run to Sydney. Isn't he the one that's been telling you she committed suicide?"

"Maybe _I_ should ask Sydney and _you_ should call up Daddy. That would get a unique response."

"Somehow I think that would be counterproductive." They both laughed at the macabre absurdity of Jarod breaking his silence in order to grill Mr. Parker about his dead wife. "The answers are at the Centre, probably in all that archival footage they have. You know they can't resist recording every damn thing that happens in that place. One day when you're back there, you should investigate it."

"You didn't happen to bring any DSAs with you, did you?"

"I thought about it, but it didn't seem like a good idea to both run away and steal their proprietary technology too. That would _really_ irritate the powers that be."

She nodded, thinking of the inevitability of going back to Blue Cove, although she had hardly been there in the past three years. "So much of my family history is buried in that mausoleum, I guess I'll have to go back at some point. You know, my father wants me to start training for SIS. I'm going to Japan this summer to work in the field office there."

Jarod kept his face as neutral as possible. _They want to keep her in captivity almost as much as they want me._ "You would be very good at that."

"I know. Of course, I'd have to turn you in then. Employer loyalty and all that. Good thing for you I'm not right now."

"Yes. You know you have a choice too, Miss Parker."

"I know."

 


	7. The company man

After they returned from the emotionally wrenching car ride, Parker retired to her room, the earliest she had come in on a Friday night since arriving at Stanford . Jarod had to be dropped off around the corner and skulk around back to get in the house, and by then she had closed the door to her room without so much as a good night. He left her alone to her thoughts. The other girls tacked a note to the fridge saying they were at The Oasis, and Jarod considered walking around and trying to find whatever that was, just watch what people were doing with their weekends. In truth, though, he didn't feel like interacting with others any more than Miss Parker did, and there was zero percent chance of falling asleep at that juncture. So Jarod did what he did best when he wanted to distract his mind from painful truths: He threw himself into a project.

Christine had given him cautious permission to use her computer, with strict instructions to not "break anything, including your brain." It was true he never had the opportunity to operate a personal microcomputer, one small enough to fit onto a tabletop. The Centre owned some very advanced machines, huge lumbering IBM mainframes that filled entire rooms and users accessed via terminals from the various sublevels. Sydney et al had never been foolish enough to let Jarod have direct access to the mainframe, but he had managed to figure it out on his own on one of his evening exploration sessions. He had never dared to venture directly into the main computer rooms, as security likely had a live feed in those locations at all times. Instead, about five years prior he had found an errant FORTRAN manual that some hapless engineer had left on his desk over the weekend, complete with handwritten notes on the commands that the Centre had uniquely added to their system. Jarod memorized the manual overnight and returned it before anyone knew it missing.

After that he tried his hand at hacking the mainframe from some of the lesser-used terminals, to varying degrees of success. At first he had high hopes of controlling the security system and reducing the omnipresent surveillance to merely occasional surveillance. It turned out that the real security on him was live human beings, not so easy to hack as a computer. He thought up various ingenious ways of looping the video feed to the guards, but all of them involved DSA players, at that time forty-pound desktop units that he could not easily move into his room and hope to have it go unnoticed. Then he poked around trying to find records on his family, but none of that had been digitized yet, the paper files probably still locked in a file cabinet somewhere. Finally he tried to access the earliest video files of himself, or even of Sydney in his office, to see if there were clues about his past buried in long-forgotten memories or background conversation. The sheer volume of data generated by all the recordings, however, made it impossible for the Centre to keep video files on the mainframe for long. They were burning everything to multiple DSA copies and filing them away, making them just as inaccessible as the paper files.

After a few months using up his precious wandering hours on fruitless quests, Jarod simply ended up rummaging around the system to determine what exactly they _were_ doing with all that computer power. To his amusement, he discovered they were running quite a few computer model simulations, some of them on exactly the same issues as his old sims. They were checking who was more reliable, child Jarod versus supercomputer, and he was gratified to find out that he won every time. They also had some complex models running on topics he had never worked on, ranging from weather forecasting to air traffic control to the invasion of arcane foreign countries.

With all of that history in the back of his mind, Jarod was certain he could break down Christine's computer and put it back together again without any difficulty. He started by cracking open the quaint box holding all her home-soldered components together. Jarod absorbed the the basic design of the machine at a glance, then removed every chip that wasn't physically welded on and examined them all in detail. The computer's guts were spread all over the kitchen table when Christine and Reyna drunkenly stumbled into the house from the evening's festivities.

They wobbled through the kitchen door to see who had the light on. In their semi-incapacitated state it took a few seconds for the two of them to grasp the scene in front of them. But when they did, a very Parker-esque volcanic look spread across Christine's face, while Reyna began to laugh.

"WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK ARE YOU DOING TO MY MACHINE?"

Jarod glanced up from his examination of the circuitry of the microprocessor, unperturbed by her shouting. "Don't worry, it will be good as new by tomorrow morning. You should drink some water and go to bed, forget what you see right now."

"FORGET ABOUT IT!? The modem alone cost six hundred dollars! It was my parent's graduation gift!"

Reyna dragged her from the room, still laughing. "Come on, it will all be a dim nightmare by the time you wake up."

Jarod had the computer back together again within the hour, and it booted up quite satisfactorily. Then he turned to read Christine's textbook on BASIC to figure out what to do next, and found it wasn't too far off the FORTRAN he already knew. By morning he had some elementary programs written for what he wanted to do, and now all he needed was access to some additional hardware to phreak the phone line.

 

******

 

The next day Parker came downstairs impeccably coiffed as usual, not a sign on her face as to the traumatic conversation the previous evening. She had long ago resolved to never break down in front of anyone, and that was as close as she had ever come in the nearly ten years since her mother's death. She vowed to get to the bottom of the mystery, but she also vowed to never let Jarod or anybody else know what an open wound it was in her soul.

Jarod was still asleep on the couch, but he was a light sleeper and woke as soon as her heels clicked down the stairs. "Oh, hi Miss Parker. I was going to make you all breakfast but I stayed up late, so ..." He rubbed his face awake and ran a hand through his unruly hair. He'd never gone so long without a haircut and it was starting to turn a bit curly.

She looked at the rumpled T-shirt and slacks he had been sleeping in, the same clothes he wore during the day. "You need more and better clothes, Jarod. Ever been to a mall?"

He brightened at the prospect of a new cultural experience, but his enthusiasm was dampened as he considered his cash flow problems. "I don't think I have enough money left to buy new clothes."

Parker grinned at that. "You know I'll be your sugar daddy. Consider it back pay, I'm sure you've been a fantastic moneymaker for my father." In fact she was amazed he had _any_ money; one of these days she would have to extract the story of exactly what he'd been doing for the past three weeks.

"Does the mall have an electronics store? There are some items I would like to get." She gave him a blank look, as if the words _electronics_ and _shopping_ should never be used together in the same thought.

"Tech Support's dad is an engineer for HP and they have a whole basement full of Star Wars gizmos. Don't ask me how I know this. He'd _love_ to meet you. Hey, Christine!"

She came out of the kitchen, eyes narrowing as she saw Jarod was awake. "Hey. Thanks for putting my computer back together correctly. You know you should ask before you dismember someone's baby on the kitchen table, right?"

"I will keep that in mind for the future."

"Christine, Jarod here would like to build even _more_ R2D2's. Maybe we can swing by your parents for spare parts before we hit the mall?"

She shrugged. "Sure, the parental units have been bugging me to come by for a visit anyway. Hey, how do you know so much about computers anyway? What are you building?"

"Oh, it's just an experiment." An illegal experiment, technically, but he felt it wise to leave that part out.

"Uh-huh. I reiterate: You break anything vital, and I will kill you, Parker or no."

"I think you might be pleased with the increased functionality," he said, trying to look innocent.

Her eyes narrowed with suspicious curiosity. "Don't get me arrested either."

"Nobody's caught me yet."

 

******

 

It turned out Christine hailed from a nearby cookie-cutter suburb, one of many eating up old California orchards in the newly burgeoning Silicon Valley. Her father was a trim bespectacled man in his late fifties, close-cropped graying hair, wearing a white collared shirt with a slide rule and pocket pens even on the weekend -- the very picture of a 1950s corporate engineer. His sombre appearance was broken, however, as he grinned and waved when the Lamborghini pulled up.

"Christine! Miss Parker, lovely to see you again."

"Hey, Dad. Listen, can we borrow some supplies for a project? This is Jarod, uh..."

"Jarod Turing," he said, stepping forward with his hand extended. He picked the name on impulse, after his favorite computer theorist. "Pleasure to meet you, sir. I'm doing a project involving a homemade optical disc storage device, and I'm having trouble calibrating the laser. I was hoping to find a portable oscilloscope to borrow."

Both young women raised their eyebrows at this smoothly delivered falsehood. It fascinated Parker to watch him subtly turn himself into a mild-mannered, middle class college student. She wondered if he was doing it consciously or was simply mimicking his surroundings.

"Optical disc storage device? I don't supposed you know anything about Laserdisc players, do you? I splurged on one last month but the damn thing died on me. I'm too stubborn an engineer to send it back for repair."

Jarod had never heard of a Laserdisc, but it sounded like a DSA player, and he'd certainly broken down those on occasion. "Well, I'm no engineer sir, but I'd be happy to take look at it if you'd like."

 _Consciously_ , thought Parker. Definitely consciously.

They walked down to the basement, which was a bazaar of electronic odds and ends. On one end of the room Christine's father had a rudimentary entertainment center set up, with a large television mounted on a shelf with wires running out the side like entrails to a splayed open box. There were several old oscilloscopes and other intriguing items, but Jarod ignored them and went straight for the device attached to the television. It _was_ like a DSA player, albeit a primitive one with vastly less data capacity. All the wires appeared to be correctly connected and the power supply was working, so Jarod focused on the mechanical laser track as the component most likely to be damaged. A little fiddling and he fixed it.

Jarod shoved everything back into the case and inserted the only disc he saw lying about, something labeled "Jaws." It flickered to life on the television, and he watched it for a few seconds, mesmerized by a fictional, full-color DSA. It was like watching a simulation come to life.

"Well, I'll be damned son. That didn't take you long. You're sure you're not an engineer?"

Jarod gave him a dazzling but self-depreciating smile. "Just a student, sir. Although I could use some more work experience, outside the classroom. Do you happen to know any teams at Hewlett-Packard that could use a part-time hand, maybe an intern?"

The man clasped Jarod's shoulder like he was his long-lost son. "I'll have to ask around a bit. Can you come by the office on Monday at noon? I can introduce you to some people. Come on kids, stay for lunch, we can talk a bit more." He gave his daughter a significant look of approval at the boy she had brought around, and bounded up the stairs to talk to his wife.

Christine came over to Jarod with narrowed eyes at his performance. "You know, for a homeless dude sleeping on our couch, you do know how to work it."

"Yes, he does seem to like me."

" _Like_ you? He's practically planning the wedding!"

"I can see the adorable nerdlet babies already," quipped Parker, and they all laughed.

 

******

 

After lunch Jarod and Parker left Christine at her parents for the afternoon, and headed back to Stanford Shopping Center. It was an outdoor plaza with many upscale shops and restaurants, located right next to the university campus. Parker deemed he was dressed too frumpishly to even enter Saks, but they could clean him up at Macy's well enough. For the Hewlett-Packard interview in particular it would not be an advantage to walk in looking too wealthy. Parker loaded him up with reasonable mid range slacks and collared shirts, and sent him to try everything on, with instructions to let her preapprove anything that seemingly fit. Meanwhile they talked through the dressing room door.

"You know you'd better be careful with the lies you tell, Jarod _Turing_. You're going to have to keep your stories straight."

"Yes, I should probably research the details of my new persona in advance, instead of making up details on the spot."

"This isn't going to help your identity crisis. How about being yourself as much as possible?"

He chuckled through the door. "Weren't you the one irritated just the other day that I told Reyna about memorizing the dictionary?"

"I got over it. Besides, most people outside my close friends have no idea about the Centre or have any reason to connect you to it."

"I still need a cover story, though. University student seems reasonable." He came out of the dressing room wearing a well-fitting shirt with light blue pinstripes and tan slacks, smiling a little shyly. He felt almost like Sydney conforming to the Centre men's dress code, except they frowned on light-colored pants.

She looked him up and down. "Well that's a vast improvement." She fixed his twisted collar, brushing her fingers against his neck as she did so. A small shiver rolled down his body.

Jarod grabbed a tie from the dressing room. "Here, can you show me how to tie this?" He wanted her to touch him again, but didn't want to admit it to himself. She looped the tie around his neck, slowly flipping it around and tightened it. She was so close to him that he could smell her hair.

"There you go, how to tie a tie. Necessary knowledge for any company man." Parker patted his shoulder, and he shut his eyes briefly, as if he had never been touched in even the smallest way. Close, he was so close, but still resisting even the smallest pleasures. "Come on, grab everything in those sizes. Enough with the practical clothes, let's go find something hedonistic and ridiculously priced."

Parker dragged him to buy belts, shoes, sports jackets, a decent raincoat. He let her dress him up like a live doll, as she seemed to be enjoying it thoroughly, and he loved watching her simply be happy. He couldn't tell if the clothes were really "him" or not, but what did it matter? Clothes were clothes, a costume of sorts, existing primarily as a social signal as far as Jarod was concerned. He'd never worn anything he was attached to or even particularly liked.

Then he saw the leather jacket.

Parker noticed what he was looking at and grinned. "Now _that's_ more like it. Go on, try it on." She reached over and ripped off the price tag so he couldn't look.

The coat was dark brown in color with a reddish tint, soft and pliable to the touch. Jarod shrugged it onto his shoulders. He loved the way it felt, and minus a mirror tried to imagine how it appeared to others. "Do you like it?"

She grinned even wider. "See, I knew you had good taste, deep down. Come on, lets get the loot home. Reyna's going to wet her pants when she sees you."

She turned to collect the latest acquisitions, but he gently pulled her back towards him by the shoulder. "Miss Parker. Thank you." She leaned in and kissed him on the check, lingering just a beat too long so he could smell her hair again, then motioned for them to go.


	8. The black swan

On Monday evening Jarod cooked them all a feast, in celebration of his successful quest for lawful employment. Naturally he had wowed the engineering groups at HP, solving at least two intractable technical problems in his first half hour of walking around. They offered to hire him on spot, afternoons only on the team to miniaturize graphing calculators. He had agreed to come in on Wednesday to fill out paperwork, which he hoped would be enough time to hack into the Social Security Administration and get himself a number, and hence a new identity. He still needed to get the device working to fool the phone company, though.

For his first moderately fancy meal, Jarod went with _coq au vin,_ a simple-to-prepare type of roast chicken, roasted potatoes and other root vegetables, pickled salad, some sourdough bread rolls he found at a bakery, and red wine for the ladies. Parker came in after her last class and helped herself to the wine a little early, and sat and watched him work.

"I take it things went the way you wanted today? Clearly they weren't fools enough to let you walk out of the door without hiring you."

"Eight dollars an hour, good enough for now. And I took your advice and didn't even alter my personality that much."

"That's progress of sorts. Maybe we should start charging you rent to sleep in the living room. Although if you keep cooking like this for us, probably good enough. I didn't even know we _had_ all this kitchen gear." He grinned and made some little rosettes out of a radish, then handed one to her with a flourish, like a knight presenting his maid with a flower. She immediately beheaded it by popping it into her mouth.

"It's nice to be able to make food for myself, and eat something other than all the restaurant meals and candy bars I consumed on the way out here. Although everything on the outside is better than optimized nutritional supplements, so I guess I shouldn't complain."

"Yeah, how did you get all the way out to the west coast? That must have been some prison break."

"I was picked up in Sanderson by some Reedies..."

"Hippies. I knew it. Wait, you ran all the way Sanderson? Why not Blue Cove, it's so much closer."

"Because that's the first place the Centre would look. Anyway, they took me all the way to Portland. I did get to attend a very interesting New Year's Eve party in Chicago. That was educational."

Parker's eyebrows went up in amusement. "You can't leave a girl hanging with that. Go on ..."

He told her all about the temporary club party, including the dragon lady, excluding the short make-out session. Then he talked about the dancing, how it made him feel vital and free.

"You could have mentioned this earlier, there's lots of places to go dancing on the weekends," Parker told him. "But have you ever seen real dancing?"

"Party dancing isn't real dancing?"

"Eh, not by my twelve-years-of-ballet-indoctrination definition, no. Professional dancing is a whole different beast, like comparing a toddler's scribbles to Monet. Do you want to see it?"

"Yes. Right now?"

"No, because a) I'm a little buzzed and that does not mix with ballet at all, and b) there's too much furniture in this little house to do anything properly. We'll sneak over to campus tonight, do it properly in the dance studio."

So much later around midnight, after the wine had worn off, Parker put on a leotard under her beautiful long coat and they crept around back in the now well-established route through the neighbors' yards. Once around the block she grabbed his cold hand and pulled him to run to campus, like she needed to warm up or at least burn off some energy. He hadn't really run since that night, only a few weeks ago although now it felt like a year. The running was exhilarating, as if more blood were flowing to every cell in his body, making every part of him feel even more energized and alive.

They found an unlocked window at the dance studio and crawled inside, and set up in a smaller practice room where they would be less likely to be noticed by wandering campus security. Jarod sat down on some athletic mats, hands around his knees. Parker popped a well-worn cassette tape into the room's player, and as the tinny oboe began to play, she began to dance. The routine was her personal nemesis and the final blow that prompted her to quit ballet training forever, Odile's variation from _Swan Lake_.

Catherine Parker had loved her daughter in ballet, and originally Miss Parker had loved it too. It was fun when you were three and ballet class meant teetering around in a tutu to your parents' beaming approval. By the time she was ten, however, Parker was officially sick of it. She hated the conformity, the pretentiousness, the lack of a formal competitive outlet that led to seriously bitchy behavior behind the scenes. She floated to her parents the idea of joining a sports team instead, a novel activity for girls at the time. Mr. Parker had nixed the notion at once, declaring that the likes of softball and soccer to be unbecoming for a proper young lady of her status. And lord knows, Miss Parker tried to be a proper young lady, tried her very best.

Then her mother died, and the world fell out from under her.

Miss Parker found that she couldn't quit ballet, no matter how much she detested it. It was something her mother had loved to see her do, and dropping out felt like a final betrayal of her memory. She stuck with it even though her father never again came to see her perform, for ballet reminded him of Catherine too, his beloved wife whom his daughter resembled more and more with each passing day. She stuck with it even after being shipped off to boarding school, and even after she started doing martial arts in addition to dance practice.

Unfortunately the studio near the boarding school was even more stultifying than the Delaware one, where any deviation from the Gods of Seventeenth Century France was viewed as a personal assault on civilization itself. Parker found her loathing reached new astronomical heights with each rehearsal. She was quite good by that time, among the lower reaches of professionals, but that didn't make up for the stifling sameness, year after year of exactly the same thing. So when she won the lead role in _Swan Lake_ for seemingly the umpteenth time, Parker was near a breaking point. Between _Swan Lake_ and _T_ _he Nutcracker_ she was ready to build a time machine and smother baby Tchaikovsky in his sleep.

She had seen some avaunt-garde dance in New York and secretly choreographed her own routines incorporating novel non-ballet forms. The plan was to spring her unique moves onto both the company and audience during one of her variations, or solos, so the cooperation of her fellow dancers was not required. It went off swimmingly too, the other performers so slack jawed at this unconscionable break in tradition that they practically forgot what they were doing once the variation ended. The audience loved it, not knowing what they were really looking at. After the performance the enraged headmistress screamed at her to never again step foot in her presence, and Parker dropped her pointe shoes in the garbage can on her way out. She signed up for kickboxing and never looked back.

Naturally, this was the routine she picked to show Jarod what real dancing was all about. Since her pointe shoes were long gone, she did it in bare feet.

From the moment the music started, Jarod sat mesmerized by her performance. He had never before seen someone's body used in a way that served no purpose but art. The dancing was athleticism, and beauty, and control, and strength, and delicacy, and expressiveness. She didn't explain the plot of the ballet in advance, but he could still tell based on her movement alone that the story involved deceit and spite and the thwarting of love. As he watched her he felt something break inside him, one of his many protective walls come tumbling down. He finally understood what she meant about being an animal, but a human animal, one that can put the mind and body together to create meaning from form alone. He understood that it was possible to control of one's body but still let it go, let it feel and experience and be.

Near the end of the variation the music sped up to a frenzy and so did Parker, the final act of Odile the successful but treacherous seductress. She was so absorbed in her role that she hadn't glanced at Jarod once until the music ended. In the silence she stood there trying to catch her breath and mentally break away from the malevolent character she had just been inhabiting. Then she looked at Jarod and saw he was staring at her with unabashed desire, showing not a trace of his previous puppy dog confusion or inhibition.

Without saying a word Parker stripped her leotard down to the waist. She let him look for a few seconds while she stared back at him, then strode over and straddled him in the sitting position, wrapping her legs around him. Then she kissed him, not at all like the gentle peck from when they were children, but deep and hungry. He responded immediately, wrapping his hands around her neck and in her hair, following her example and improving his skills by the second.

Parker pulled back from his lap just enough to make room to pull his shirt over his head, then slid back down so their bare chests touched. They resumed kissing, limbs and mouths and hands entangled. Once upon a time Parker had tried to have sex in this position, and found it comically difficult given the angles and general lack of mobility. It was, however, a fantastically intimate way to kiss someone, their bodies like two parts of a lock sliding together, immobile, pressed against each other.

Suddenly Jarod tipped forward, so Parker was on her back on the mat and he was on top, still kissing her. With the ability to move restored a bit she worked on undoing his pants and removing the remaining vestiges of their clothes. He seemed intent on tasting and touching every inch of skin on the upper half of her body, working down from her mouth to her neck and chest. Having gotten off all the inconvenient garments, Parker impatiently dragged his face back to hers with one hand and guided the tip of his penis to her entrance with the other hand. For the first time he visibly slowed down and hesitated, as if the cautious control freak part of his brain was taking over again.

"Push inside me," she whispered in his ear, hoping to hell that talking would give him the nudge he needed and not just break the spell more. He followed her command but with agonizing slowness, and she couldn't tell if he was overwhelmed or just savoring the experience. She kissed him again, this time softly and tenderly, to give a him few seconds to adjust to what had to be radically new sensations all over his body. Then she leaned up and whispered again. "It's generally considered traditional to move during sex, Jarod."

As she hoped, this prompted a smile, and he did begin to move. It was maddeningly slow for her taste at first, as if he was afraid of hurting her, but she egged him on to go faster and harder until they reached the speed where she could feel her orgasm building. Then she wrapped her legs and arms around him and just let him go at it, her favorite part of sex where the pleasure built up and she seemed to be both in and outside of her body, observing herself. Somehow she had no doubt he would be able to hold out for her, despite the fact that plenty of men with far more experience couldn't. All of those goddamned endurance tests he had been forced to do over the years were finally good for something.

As she approached her climax she felt him falter, his breathing irregular and thrusting slowing down, trying to hold himself back. She dug her nails into his back to urge him on, desperate. "No, no I'm almost there, just a little more ..." He moaned and responded with gusto, abandoning what little restraint he had left. She came almost immediately and he soon followed, both of them now gasping and sweating.

When they had a minute to come up for air, Jarod rolled to one side so his weight was wasn't entirely on top of her, but his body was still pressed against the length of hers. He kissed her neck and ear and murmured, "You were wrong, Miss Parker. That was much _more_ fun than racing the 'ghini." She chuckled at that and he kissed her throat, her collarbone, her shoulder, and began working his way down her chest again.

"Uh, Jarod, I hate to be a pessimist, but even _I_ need more than sixty seconds recovery time before going at it again."

"I don't want to go at it again, I just want to touch you, to ..." he licked some sweat between her breasts "... taste you. Everywhere."

"Oh. Explore away then. I am better than an anatomical doll, it's true. Although this activity might be a little more comfortable at home in my bed than here on the floor."

"Your bed?" he said dubiously, as if the possibility had never before occured to him.

"Yup. Sleep and all. One of the great unsung pleasures of having a lover is sleeping next to them, no clothes, naked skin touching all night long." He groaned at that tantalizing prospect, and she realized that the amount of skin-to-skin contact they had shared over the past twenty minutes was probably more than he had experienced in the previous fifteen years combined. It made her want to curl up to his naked body even more. A lovely body indeed, now that she had an undistracted moment to look at it.

"Come on, we'd better get out of here before security catches us _in flagrante delicto_. Just throw your coat and shoes on."

"What, no clothes underneath?"

"Well, I would just rip them off again as soon as we get home. This way is so much more efficient. Although ..." she looked down at herself, "I should at least put on some underwear."

It took him an instant to get what she was talking about, then suddenly another related thought popped into his mind. He tensed and gaped at her with wide panicked eyes. It was almost comical how fast his mind changed gears, as if a switch had been flipped.

"Wait ... we didn't use ... you could get pregnant."

She fought to keep a straight face. "Oh, Jarod, that is the most adorably naive thing anyone has said to me in months." He relaxed about an inch. "Not only have I been on the pill since I was, oh, fifteen, I considered it my civic duty to get all the other girls at boarding school illegal scrips as well. A public service, really."

"Fifteen? Really?"

"Well, girls do mature faster than boys." They both laughed at this bit of childhood wisdom, from half a lifetime ago. "The truth is I'm an woman of loose morals and a disreputable past. That had better not bother you."

"I think I can manage it," he murmured, and kissed her yet again.

 


	9. Sunrise, sunset

Jarod woke in a panic for an instant, disoriented as to where he really was. The unpleasant dream -- he couldn't really classify it as a nightmare, seeing as he hadn't woken up purely from the terror -- was fairly typical as these things go. He had been recaptured by the Centre, and as punishment for running away Raines had tossed him in the lowest sublevel, all the way down on 26, stripped him down, tied him to table, and tortured him with weights pressed down on his body and unholy spotlights shined directly in his eyes.

It took him a second to realize the weight was Miss Parker sleeping on top of his chest, and the light was sunlight streaming through her window. It still seemed so bright when he saw it anew every morning, even on cloudy days. It was hard to imagine what it would look like in the summer, when the sun shined directly overhead.

He closed his eyes again for a short meditation, to control his breathing, his heart rate, his muscles, to make his mind comprehend and believe where he really was. It took no more than fifteen seconds, every morning. Dreams were a lot like simulations in many ways, alternative realities that his brain gave birth to each night, and the process of coming out of it was much the same, only shorter. He glanced at Parker's alarm clock: 7:40. It would go off in twenty minutes, a good amount of time for him to lie there and think over what had happened the night before, and try to imagine what the hell he should do now.

Jarod obviously hadn't planned on having sex, but he hadn't just lost all semblance of control either as he originally feared he might. Instead the decision was a lot like the one he made every time Miss Parker had come down to see him when they were children, to cajole him into crawling up the elevator shaft or locating a dead body or whatever other crazy scheme she had come up with. At every visit the logical part of his mind knew it was terrible idea, that it would cause trouble in the long run, but his desire to be near her superseded everything else, so he never said no. Jarod didn't think he had ever directly said no to her in his life, and the previous night certainly wouldn't prove to be the exception. He had watched her incredible dancing, where she had inhabited and expressed a new person every bit as much as if she was doing a sim, and simply _wanted_ her, more than he had wanted anyone or anything before. If she hadn't taken her clothes off he likely would have swallowed his desire as he usually did, pushing it deep down within himself and burying it. But once she started kissing him his mind slid into the new reality, and it was no longer within the realm of possibility to say no.

After they had talked awhile on the increasingly freezing floor mat, Jarod allowed himself to be convinced to run back to the house, where the possibility of a warm comfy bed awaited them. The taboo run, carrying many of their clothes instead of wearing them, was even more invigorating than on the way to the dance studio. Parker had dragged him straight through the back door and up the stairs to her bedroom without pause, and they practically fell on top of one another laughing the minute the door slammed behind them. Jarod finally had a chance to touch and explore her body, accompanied by her encouragement and sarcastic tips. Eventually Parker declared she couldn't take the teasing anymore, and it was _his_ turn. She climbed on top and rode him until he was on the brink, then tormented him by slowing down to a crawl. Over and over again, a contest to see how long he could take it. Apparently losing one's virginity Miss Parker-style meant a marathon of stamina like it was an Olympic sport.

He had no idea if any of that was normal or not. But she had been right; it was _fun_. Not just pleasurable to the body, but enjoyable to the mind as well. Jarod had always imagined the sexual drive to be like other biological drives such as hunger and thirst, only more easily suppressed: Impulses that built up in the body until addressed or released. Of course, eating and preparing food had turned out to be fun too, albeit of a different order, so he had been wrong about that also. He wondered how it was possible his simulations were at all accurate or reliable, given how misinformed he had been on so many crucial aspects of everyday life. Another item to add to the growing list of things to ask Sydney, if he ever spoke to him again.

Miss Parker rolled to one side, still on top of his chest pinning down an arm. With his free hand Jarod reached up and ran his fingertips along the smooth skin of her back. She shifted slightly in response, which led to her face being squashed in what he guessed was a conventionally unattractive manner. He thought it was adorable. Was this what falling in love felt like, when you wanted to be around a person all the time? He still felt confusion about his place in the world, anxiety about his future, stress about potentially being caught and hauled back to captivity. But there was one negative emotion that had previously been his constant companion, but he hardly missed its recent absence from his soul.

Loneliness.

He stroked her cheek and she stirred again, rolling up to his shoulder and reaching a hand around his neck. Even though his arm was starting to fall asleep, he wrapped what he could around her, to bring her body as close as possible to his, to touch her even more, without waking her up.

 

******

 

After feeding the grateful ladies strawberry crepes and gallons of coffee on their way out the door, Jarod set to work on his morning task: Illegally breaking into government computers, both to establish a new identity for himself and acquire more information about the Centre. Curiously enough, the illegal part probably wasn't breaching security itself, as the law had hardly caught up with the concept of accessing sensitive files from three thousand miles away. However he needed control over the telephone line in order to conceal his current location, and that required building a device that definitely _was_ illegal due to its capacity to evade long distance charges. They called it a blue box, although his wasn't blue.

Jarod was only ten when he was assigned a simulation on potential vulnerabilities in the United States' telecommunications system. The monopolistic telephone company of America, AT&T, had accidentally published in an obscure journal the frequencies of the tones used to control newly automated phone switches, thus enabling those knowledgeable in electrical engineering to manipulate the system. Naturally Ma Bell was interested in methods to prevent toll fraud without retrofitting the infrastructure of the entire nation. He suspected the FBI or other intelligence agencies were also involved in the sim, as he had spent a significant chunk of time working on problems related to wiretapping, both of the commercial lines and special defense department systems. It was the first simulation he had ever done that was primarily an engineering problem, although they did have him Pretend to be some of the hackers and phreakers playing around with the system, in order to clarify their motivations.

The upshot of all of this was that Jarod likely had more functional knowledge of the telephone networks than any general citizen in the country. Which he would need to hack the Pentagon, although the Social Security Administration proved to be a less difficult problem once he identified the correct lines to dial into. He assigned "Jarod Turing" a new number and looked up what scant information they had on his parents. The SSA's database was primitive, but they did have records of a married couple by the names he had been given, who died June 14, 1967 with no living beneficiaries listed. All consistent with what he had been told.

For his first foray into espionage Jarod started with the FBI, as it was the agency most likely to have information on his family and probably the Centre and even himself, given Hoover's predilection for domestic spying. He quickly realized that the FBI had a hopelessly antiquated filing system ... _paper_. They had the National Crime Information Center database of course, but rather incredibly missing children were not included as "crimes" unless a body showed up. There had to be innumerable special investigations and secret projects that were not recorded on the NCIC or any other mainframe that Jarod could identify. If they were spying on the Centre -- and Jarod found it hard to believe they were not in some capacity -- the information was buried in a filing cabinet somewhere, inaccessible without physically going into Langley. Which he was not prepared to do at that time.

He considered cutting straight to the heart of the CIA at that point, but despite some helpful ARPAnet connections the Pentagon really was a giant rat maze trapped inside a black box, and it would take some dedicated time to gain access in a way that would not be detected or traceable. Christine would be home sometime in the afternoon and would probably want the computer back, so he needed to wrap up the investigations for the day. So he opted to do some explorations of the National Security Agency instead, as a sort of trial run.

The secretive NSA had been outed to the American public during Watergate but there was still nary a mention of it in the press as far as Jarod could tell. The agency was responsible for non-human-based intelligence in foreign countries, wiretapping and bugging being its specialty. Jarod had received reams of NSA transcripts over the past few years for his various foreign affairs simulations, which he preferred over the CIA and State Department's more interpretive reports. It was much easier to get into the heads of foreign nationals when their actual conversations were in front of you, particularly in the speaker's original language. The Centre had dealings in many overseas countries, some of them not particularly friendly to the United States, to an extent Jarod was just beginning to get a grasp of. He hoped something interesting might turn up in regards to these connections.

He was rooting around not very seriously, doing some basic searches just to see what he could see, when he found a series of files related to the Centre's Paris office. All were from 1969 or early 1970, all labeled "C_Parker." Not E_Parker -- Edwin Parker, Miss Parker's father -- but _Catherine_ Parker. The files were encrypted so Jarod couldn't see the contents, but he downloaded them anyway to work on later.

Why would the NSA have files on Catherine Parker just before she died? Jarod was mulling this over when all three housemates walked through the door from their afternoon lectures. Christine looked over Jarod's fidgeting form, clearly curled up on a kitchen chair for hours. Then the blue box chirped out some dial tones as he disconnected, and she got a good look at what he had hooked up to the oscilloscope and modem. She gasped.

"Are you _phreaking_ our phone line?! You know this is illegal, right? Guys, we could be arrested for this, or worse, _expelled_."

Parker and Reyna glanced at each other and shrugged simultaneously. "Any man who would get up and feed me crepes and French-pressed coffee before Biochem gets the benefit of the doubt on his magical beeping machine," said Reyna.

Christine looked as if she was about to rip his carefully soldered wires out of her setup and throw the whole contraption in the trash, and follow it up with Jarod's ass. "Just tell me _why_. Why are you doing this, you don't want to pay some lousy long distance charges?"

"Well, there's that. I've been on with the East Coast for five hours so I understand that would be quite expensive? Trust me when I say AT&T owes me. Mostly though I wanted to break into some secret national intelligence archives. Don't worry, on their end it will look like the files have been transferred from one DOD site to another via ARPAnet."

"HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND? The Department of _Defense ?!_ ..."

Parker moved to intervene before Jarod could open his mouth any further. "Okay, Christine, keep your panties on. He'll remove it. Right, Jarod?" He intended to do no such thing of course, so they stared each other down for a few seconds before Jarod got the message. _If you want to continue staying here, you'll do it._

Finally and with great reluctance Jarod disattached the blue box. "I'll find an alternate setup that doesn't involve your computer or phone line, if that will keep everyone happy."

Mollified for the moment, Christine relaxed. "You're too smart for your own good, Jarod," she muttered. "It's going to get you into trouble one day."

"It already got me into trouble by the time I was four years old," he replied. At that Miss Parker grabbed him and dragged him from the kitchen.

"Okay Einstein, time to talk. Get your coat because we're going for a walk."

 

******

 

They wandered in the tree-lined neighborhood behind the house with no destination in mind.

"She's right you know. Sooner or later you're going to bring a heap of shit down on yourself if you continue to blatantly break the law." Parker knew that Jarod held to his own version of morality. He had been taught to obey the Centre's rules over his person, and had his own deep sense of justice, but the Centre had also taught him that society's arbitrary laws did not apply to him.

"But I wouldn't have gotten caught."

"You're not God, Jarod, you can't know that for sure. Besides, when you're living with other people, sometimes it's just the appearance of propriety that matters."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cause trouble between you and your friends. I would never do anything to hurt anyone."

"I know." She took his hand in hers as they ambled along, something that would have seemed a little school-girlish with anyone else but was just comfortable with him. She sensed that despite the previous night's activities he still craved physical contact. There could never be enough for the boy behind the glass wall.

"So, does this mean I can stay? I'm not kicked out?"  
"Well, I think you're grounded from the computer young man. And you might want to whip up something extra fattening to placate Tech Support for abusing her pet. But you can stay."

"Oh, good, I was just getting used to the couch."

"For fucks sake Jarod, just put all of your crap in my room already. I think we'd all like the living room back anyway." He brought her hand up to his lips and lightly kissed it at this display of impending domesticity. Then he noticed something unusual behind her.

"Hey, what is that?" Jarod pointed with his free hand to a squat one-story building with many windows.

"The school? It's an elementary school I think, for younger kids."

"So those pendulums, they are for the children?"

Parker had to smile. "They're called swings, but yes. It's a playground. Come on, it's never too late to learn to swing." She pulled him over to play equipment and taught him how to propel himself on the swing. Then for good measure she demonstrated the incline plane and centrifuge too, or as she corrected him, the slide and merry-go-round. Jarod declared it to be the best physics lesson he had ever received, and she couldn't help but laugh.

After playing awhile it became too dark to see well, so they laid on their backs on top of the climbing structure and watched the stars come out. Unlike the evening on the beach it was dry and clear, and the universe of stars spread out in the expanse above them. Parker took his hand again and they intertwined their fingers, and rested their heads together.

"Miss Parker, did you play on a playground like this when you were young?"

"I suppose I must have, but I can't think of it. I don't really remember being innocent playful kid, ever. In my family you were always supposed to be proper young lady. In control and dignified, not running around like a feral cat."

He nodded and paused for awhile, and she knew some other emotionally fraught question was coming. "How come you never came back to visit me? You know, after we got caught that time, do you remember?"

Parker squeezed his hand and rolled towards him, kissing his neck. How could she forget?

After her mother had died Mr. Parker had thrown himself into his work, as if he wanted to push everything personal out of his mind forever. On weekdays Miss Parker went to school and was responsible for herself in the afternoons, but on the weekends Daddy often still went into the office, bringing her with him but leaving her to fend for herself in that gargantuan building. That's when she started sneaking down to see Jarod more and more. Frequently he was working on simulations with Sydney, but she discovered she could check on him in the sim lab from a ventilation shaft without being observed. On occasion, perhaps once a month, she found him alone, and would kick in the vent and drag him away from whatever research he was supposed to be doing. He always flashed his brilliant smile whenever she appeared, and he never said no, no matter how much trouble he would be in if his absence was noticed.

Jarod figured out the pattern quickly of course, that she always appeared on the weekends when there was less staff on duty, and always when he was alone. As time went on and they were not caught, they became less and less cautious. On that final fateful day not too far in advance of Sydney's annual New Year's vacation, Jarod was supposed to be preparing for a demonstration sim in front of some of the higher ups of the Centre and its affiliates, including Mr. Parker. When Miss Parker appeared at the vent, for once he agonized over whether to go with her. He calculated there was a ninety percent probability that no one would show up for at least an hour, and decided to risk it. And at last their luck run out.

Sydney showed up at the sim lab thirty minutes later with entourage in tow. When his fourteen-year-old protege was nowhere to be found either in the sim lab or his room, a panicked general alert went out, locking down the Centre for the afternoon. They finally found their delinquent lurking in the kitchen of the cafeteria a few floors above, with the Chairman's daughter about to feed him a verboten turkey sandwich. Mr. Parker was understandably incensed, dragged his wayward offspring out of there, and Jarod never saw her again during the remainder of his stay at the Centre.

"The short answer is Daddy sent me off to boarding school after Christmas break that year. I came back to the Centre occasionally, but he always saddled me with a sweeper, with strict instructions to stay in the Tower. But honestly, that answer's kind of a cop-out. I probably could have lost the detail, but after a year or so I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to be reminded of my mother or being a child at all. And it was sure as hell fine with Daddy to have me out of his hair and effectively on my own. After Mama died he left me alone more and more, and I had to create a new life of my own."

"I would have reminded you of your old life?" Jarod asked softly.

She closed her eyes and buried her face in his hair. "I didn't want to think about you, Jarod. About what they were probably doing to you, about the fact that were keeping you locked away like some kind of lab animal. Not my problem anymore. It breaks my heart to think about it, that they made Sydney do a T-board and God knows what to you over a _sandwich_. Which you never even got to eat."

He turned to her and kissed her, stroking her hair. "I've had a club sandwich and many other delicious things since leaving. And you know it wasn't about the food. I disobeyed orders and did something solely for the fun of it, not for them." He was the one who closed his eyes this time, thinking of the two years they had kept him under heavy lockdown because he had proven "untrustworthy." It had been worth it to see her. "I'm glad you escaped, Miss Parker. Maybe you should never go back. Don't even look back."

"But now I need to figure out what happened with my mother. I have to go back."

"Your mother. I found something strange about your mother, just before you all got back from classes. There were files on the NSA server with her name from the Centre's Paris office. Possibly wiretap transcripts, but I couldn't read the files."

"The NSA? That's the little brother to the CIA's Big Brother, right? She was just a socialite, why would they bother to bug her phone but not my father's?"

"Perhaps she didn't know about it, but it's also possible she was giving them information."

"You're saying Mama was some sort of spy. Great, the mystery deepens." She sighed and stretched out, then sat up on the play structure. "Come on, I need to move. Let's run home again."

"Why do you keep asking me to run with you?"

Miss Parker grinned and jumped down, beckoning him to follow. "Because you're the only man I know who can keep up, or would even bother to try. Come on, come on, playtime's over. Or maybe just beginning."


	10. The simulation

Nearly three weeks later on a bright Sunday afternoon, Jarod sat on the bed in their bedroom and peered out through the gauzy inner curtain, watching the sweeper detail. He was starting make a habit of that, watching them as they watched nothing, staring straight ahead in their Chryslers, never speaking or seemingly moving. Jarod had thought that guarding him at the Centre was the most boring job in the world, but he was wrong: _This_ was the most boring job, bar none. There were eight sweepers total, four teams of two, all white males of similar age, build and dress, which made it difficult to tell them apart from afar. They swapped out like clockwork at six am and six pm, the new car sliding up to the curb and the old one pulling out, like factory widgets being replaced.

The sweeper detail appeared to serve no purpose, which bothered and unnerved Jarod. He thought it was possible they had monitoring equipment in the trunk, but if that were true, why hadn't they barged in to grab him? Why hadn't they _noticed_ him sneaking around for weeks on end? He was still using the back door, but their dull predictability made the task especially easy. If the car even so much as moved its position on the street every once in awhile, they probably would have seen him by now. It seemed not just boring but incompetent, and Jarod had never met a sweeper that struck him as poor at his job.

Miss Parker came in to see what he was doing, climbing up on the bed on her knees and running her fingertips along the back of his neck under his wavy hair. "You know if you keep staring at them and thinking about them, you're going to turn into one of them."

"There's something wrong here. It's like they're not even _alive_."

"Robot sweepers, the next Centre innovation. Maybe you should run that as a simulation." She ran her hand down inside the collar of his shirt, and he finally turned to lock eyes on her. Parker rewarded that by straddling him and trailing slow sucking kisses down his neck and onto his chest.

It had been increasingly difficult for the two of them to keep their hands off each other. Parker began to joke that if it weren't for HP she'd be failing her classes, because the afternoons where Jarod biked over to his job were the only solid blocks of time she took to study. Weekday mornings she was occupied with classes and martial arts training. But the long evenings, those she reserved for him. Reyna and Christine were both taking a lot of science classes, which unlike Parker's language and poli sci courses required an endless array of labs, recitations, and study groups. They all ate whatever dinner Jarod prepared as a group, talking and arguing until the two girls left for their evening activities. Then Parker and Jarod would fall on each other, ravenous, night after night.

They both had beautiful feline bodies, sleek and athletic, but each desired something different in their counterpart. Parker always wanted to take him immediately, hard, to have him push her to her limits and vice versa. Jarod, on the other hand, was constantly trying to linger over her body, touch and lick her skin, experience everything slowly and fully. It was almost a type of sexual incompatibility except that they both enjoyed the other's viewpoint thoroughly, it just wasn't their preferred initial conditions. They settled on a pattern where Jarod played with her after having sex, which led to her teasing him mercilessly about how normal people do the foreplay _before_ the rigorous fucking, hence the "fore." He didn't care. He preferred exploring her post orgasm, when she was relaxed and sweaty and in a good mood, and he could do whatever he liked for as long as he liked.

That lazy Sunday afternoon, Parker had thought of something to stretch his boundaries even further.

She had him propped up on a pile of pillows, sitting on top of and rubbing against his burgeoning erection, slowly unbuttoning his shirt and running her hands all over his chest. He was surprised at this sudden display of touchie-feelieness, but in no way was going to question it.

"Tell me, Jarod, back at the Centre, when you were alone at night in your cell, did you ever think about me?"

He looked a little sheepish. "Yes," he murmured. "Although I did try to picture what you looked like as you got older." In truth he had used Catherine Parker as a template, which back then seemed a little perverted but turned out to be a surprisingly accurate rendering.

"Did you touch yourself?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever imagine me coming into your room, the way I used to come into the sim lab?"

 _"Yes."_ His voice sounded strained and his eyes were closed. She rocked a fraction faster.

"Well, I imagined it too. Do you want to hear what I used to think about?"

"God, yes."

"Mmmm. I'm fifteen and you're sixteen. I'm home from boarding school for Christmas break. I miss you and can't stop thinking about you, how lonely you probably are. So I decide to give you a Christmas present. In the middle of the night." Jarod's eyes were still closed and by the look on his face she knew he was simming it in full Technicolor. Exactly what she wanted.

"I come downstairs and in my bossiest tone of voice tell the guards that my father has ordered me to be there, as a private experiment, and they'd better let me in. Which they do.

"It's very dark in the room and you appear to be asleep. But when I come over to your bed, you roll over and look at me. You heard me with the guards and are waiting for me. You can't believe I'm really there. We are both so nervous but I can't resist reaching out and touching your face and lips." She did reach out then and with the lightest touch possible ran her manicured nails along his chin and mouth. He gasped but did not open his eyes.

"You sit up in bed then and touch me back, and I lean forward to kiss you. We're both too terrified to use tongues, but it's still sweet and sensuous and full of promise." She kissed him exactly how she described, no tongue, and he reached his hands up to her neck and entangled them in her hair. Parker then pulled back and resumed rocking on his lap.

"You pull the cover on your bed back to beckon me in. I've never been in bed with a boy before and my heart is pounding faster than it ever has before. At first I just sit on the side of the bed as we look at each other, and then I guide your hands over to help me unbutton my blouse. You can feel my breasts through the shirt and it takes all of your focus not to cup them through the fabric. You're not sure if I would like that." She did undo her blouse at that point, and unsnapped the bra as well, but left the clothes on her arms and shoulders. She took his hands under hers and ran them along her skin from her hips up to her breasts, letting him rub and pinch them.

"When I get my shirt completely off, you sit and stare at them. You've never seen real breasts outside of a book before. I ask you if you want to touch them and you reach out hesitantly, like you're afraid I'm an dream that will dissipate when you touch me. When you finally do press your fingers against them, you're surprised at how soft and squishy they are."

Jarod smiled at this, while still keeping his eyes closed and massaging her breasts.

"I'm getting bold, and decide to do something I've never done before, but always wanted to. I take your face in my hands and guide it down to my chest, and you know what to do. You take a nipple in your mouth and suck on it. It feels even more incredible than I could have imagined."

Parker slid up his abdomen so her chest was within striking distance of his mouth, her shirt dangling around his head. He eagerly began to suck hard on her, setting up a rhythm and alternating with flicks from his tongue. Parker moaned and wrapped her arms around his head. She had to stop the narration for a moment while she just let the pleasure wash over her. Jarod switched nipples and worked it just as hard, trying to make her cry out again.

When she broke him off and resumed again, her voice was shaky. "Now we're both more aroused than we ever have been before. I want to see what you look like too, so I pull your shirt over your head and we both pull down your boxer shorts." She shifted position again, down this time so she could unzip his pants and pull them down. Like her shirt, she left his pants partially on, which had the bonus effect of pinning him even more in place.

"I'm distracted and fascinated by your cock, because I've never seen one in the flesh either. This time you're the one who guides my hand to let me touch you. I'm also surprised by how soft it is, how wet you already are." Breaking from the pattern, Parker did not take his penis into her hand. Instead she removed her underwear and slid him into her, moving very slowly, her skirt hitched up around her waist. Jarod writhed at this unexpected development.

"Together we take off my corduroy skirt, and now that we both have all of our clothes off, I climb into bed with you and lie next to you, the whole length of my body pressed against yours. We wrap out arms around each other and begin to kiss again, reveling in how amazing it all feels."

Jarod tried to sit up more and reached for her, desperate to kiss her, but she pushed him back down into the pillows and began to ride him faster.

"Finally your curiosity gets the better of you and you reach between my legs. I'm wet. Extremely wet. So wet it's impossible for you to find my clit, but I don't care because all I want is for you to push inside me. I whisper in your ear that I want you, I beg you to take me. You're more excited than ever, and roll on top of me." They were thrusting together hard and fast now, both well on their way to coming. Parker was amazed she was able to keep speaking.

"Together we figure out where to put your cock. You push into me, ever so slowly. Suddenly there's blood everywhere."

Jarod's eyes snapped open. "WHAT the ..." He tried to sit up again but she shoved his shoulders back even more aggressively and moved harder, staring into his eyes.

"You begin to freak out because you think you've hurt me. But in reality it feels so, so good, I want you to keep going, stay inside me forever. I murmur in your ear again to move, please keep moving, don't stop. Against your better judgment you do it, and you can't believe how wonderful it feels either. It's like we've joined together as a single person, and nothing in our lives is left but the pleasure emanating from our bodies."

Jarod was out of the sim then, gazing back at her, moving with her. It may have been the most intimate thing he had ever done when they came, still staring into each other's eyes.

Afterward she laid down on his chest, their bodies still tangled up in half-removed clothes. He pulled her up to kiss at last. When he was finally able to catch his breath, he whispered to her, "You know, you may have missed your calling as a Pretender."

"Well if every sim were like that, you wouldn't have run away, now would you? I can see it now, getting deflowered in the sim lab, with Sydney soberly circling with a clipboard asking for more details of how you feel."

"Oh my God, you really are warped."

"You're just now noticing this? So tell me, how does my fantasy compare to the ones of your teenage horny self?"

"Exactly the same, only with less blood and more kissing," he replied, and they both laughed.


	11. Mixed tapes

Jarod walked to campus with Parker bright and early the next Monday morning, then proceeded with his new morning ritual of a gooey cinnamon roll, coffee with a mountain of sugar dumped in, and a copy of every major newspaper he could get his hands on. His heart sank at all the top headlines that morning: "100 DAYS IN CAPTIVITY." The press was still relentless on the Iranian hostage crisis, despite the inconvenient fact that all American reporters had been booted from the country in January, there wasn't a lot of urgent news to report, and none of the remaining dispatchers from the West seemed to speak Farsi. Jarod obsessively read every scrap he could get nevertheless, missing his insider CIA reports more and more with each vague speculative article.

He still felt tremendous guilt over leaving the State Department in the lurch, although rationally he knew there was only a slim chance he could have done anything constructive about the situation. Some problems in world affairs were insolvable for a reason, when the politics and cultural view of the various sides made it impossible for anyone to maneuver. It was within the power of the United States to pressure Panama to hand the Shah over to the current Iranian government, but that wasn't going to happen, because the U.S. cared more about honoring its public commitments and maintaining an image of strength than getting its citizens back. The student radicals could admit that they had already gained everything they could from the hostage crisis, and keeping them longer would only erode what little moral high ground they held in the international community. But that would damage their popularity at home, plus they fervently believed God was on their side, and since when does Allah change his mind?

Jarod's daily dose of brooding was interrupted by a couple of flirty girls stopping by with yet another cassette tape. Somehow word had gotten out around campus about him, namely that he was living with Parker and had somehow grown up in an environment without music. Jarod was amused that this latter fact was the thing the Stanford campus had collectively latched onto as the most horrifying aspect of his childhood, but he was also touched that people seemed determined to rectify the appalling deprivation. Parker and Reyna's friends began making him mixed tapes and copies of their favorite albums, so he now had a pile of cassettes with cryptic labels such as _Magical Deadhead Mix, White album, showtunes I secretly sing in the shower, Glenn Gould kills Rachmaninoff, bob dylan only listen to when high, Mom's fav Miles Davis sets,_ _R_ _idiculous_ _D_ _isco_ _, david bowie is crazy in a good way_ _._

Jarod's favorite tape of all was one simply marked _shit i like._ It was a mix of folk and rock songs with beautiful lyrics, ones that he listened to over and over again in the morning while the girls were at classes. He didn't know why he was so attached to those particular songs, as there were plenty of others in the collection with lovely melodies. Like the dancing before it, the songs seemed to channel and release his confused and broken emotions. Even though he was happier than he'd ever been, sometimes despondency crept up on him. He knew deep in his soul that he wasn't doing enough, that he was selfishly wasting his time on his personal life, that he had somehow missed his true calling. But through the songs, he could feel it and then let it go.

_'Cathy I'm lost,' I said, though I knew she was sleeping. 'I'm empty and aching and I don't know why.'_

_The ocean is a desert with its life underground, and a perfect disguise above_

_As I hung up the phone it occurred to me he'd grown up just like me, my boy was just like me_

_I see the girls walk by in their summer clothes, I have to turn my head until my darkness goes_

_In the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried and the poets dreamed, but not a word was spoken, the church bells all were broken_

_Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again_

_I only wish my words could just convince myself that it wasn't real, but that's not the way it feels_

He smiled and flirted a tiny bit back at the girls dropping off the latest ( _joni mitchell you'll dig it!!)_ , then bid them adieu. He was relaxing on the flirting front; somehow it was more possible to just have fun when it was impossible for it to lead anywhere, for it was universally recognized and respected that he was with Parker. Jarod was amazed at how many people knew her on campus, and by extension him, even though they were rarely together in public. He was concerned at first that would make him easy for the Centre to find him, but the sweepers in dark suits didn't exactly have their ears to the ground while sitting in a car all day, so eventually he ceased to worry about it.

Jarod decided to head back to the house for the remainder of the morning, to listen to the new tape and work on one of his inventions, which he tinkered with in the musty unfinished basement much like Christine's father did. Sooner or later he knew he was going to have to face his past and leave campus in search of information about his parents or other family. At the moment however it was impossible to contemplate leaving while falling so deeply for someone, while feeling near-addiction to her presence every night, so he put his energy into activities he could do in the area.

Some tiny voice in his head whispered things like _infatuation induced short-term endorphin release_ , but he squelched that voice for the killjoy it was. You only fall in love for the first time once, and he wanted to feel it all from beginning to end, let himself go, drown in the experience . She would pull him back up for air if he went too far, he trusted her for that now, and trusted himself.

Jarod went through the neighbor's yard as usual and entered the back door. At the scene in the kitchen, though, he suddenly stopped short. Reyna was there at the table, her head down in her arms, crying softly. He ran over to her immediately.

"Hey, now, what's wrong?"

She jerked her head up, startled and embarrassed at being caught in such a weak moment. "It's ... it's nothing, I'll be fine."

Jarod knelt down next to her at the table and rubbed her tense shoulders. "It's not nothing and you're not fine. You don't have to tell me, but you don't have to pretend everything's okay either."

"It's just..." She took a deep breath. "I talked to my father this morning. He still won't agree to let me go to med school."

"Why not? You would make a wonderful doctor. And didn't you say that your country needs more women physicians?"

She nodded and wiped her eyes. "Yeah. In some of those traditional families, the husbands won't let their wives see a male doctor, or if they do have to go, they won't let them be touched. But it doesn't matter. My parents have reached their limits on Western education and influence of their little girl. They want to see me get married before I'm too old to make a desirable match. Stanford grad is desirable, woman with her own independent career, not so much."

"Why do you need their permission? Can't you just go on your own and stay in the United States?"

Reyna patted him on the hand for his naivety and laughed bitterly. "Well, let's see. If I disobeyed my father publicly like that, I would be cut off with no money, no family, and no legal means to be in the U.S. I would probably never be allowed to see any of them again. My family would be disgraced, the loss of honor great enough that some of my younger female cousins might have trouble getting married. And sure as hell they wouldn't let any of them go to college, for fear of it happening again. Some things in life have consequences, Jarod. Some fates cannot be avoided, because the price is too much to pay."

"I'm sorry. I would do anything in my power to help you."

"I know you would. But some things can't be fixed, not even by a genius." She took another breath to pull herself together. "All right, enough moping, I've got a biochem lab to go to. See you later, okay?" And just like that, she erased the worry and grief from her features as if it never happened, and grabbed her book bag and walked out the front door.

Jarod sat by the front window just to the side of the curtain, thinking about Reyna and her dilemma. It felt like a puzzle that must have a solution, but maybe she was right. There were no solutions, only choices to be made, choices with consequences for many people, to the point where the entire idea of choice may be an illusion.

Since he was sitting there, he began to watch the sweepers, out of habit if nothing else. He pulled the inner curtain back and peered around the edge of it, to see who was on duty today. As he did so, the sweeper on the side of the car facing the house shifted his eyes and just for a second and looked directly at Jarod in the window. Then he saw that Jarod was looking back at him, and suddenly shifted his eyes to the front of the car again, straight ahead.

The sweeper had seen and recognized him. Jarod was sure of it. But he was pretending he hadn't seen anything at all.

Without even thinking it through, Jarod stood up and impulsively did something that he could have regretted for the rest of his life. He opened the door and walked out onto the front porch.

 

******

 

Miss Parker sat in her Russian Lit class, suede maxi skirt spread out around and under her, legs jutting out and crossed at the ankle, waiting to trip some hapless passerby. She was supposed to be analyzing the imagery of Pushkin, but instead was thinking only about Jarod. Partially she was devising some new and deviant things to get him to do that evening, or maybe she would save it up for Valentine's Day later that week. Jarod had flat-out informed her she would be skipping classes on Friday morning, so he obviously had something cooking up his sleeve. She was surprised he even knew about old V-Day, but Reyna had gleefully forewarned him at the beginning of February so he had time to prepare.

Increasingly, though, she was having disconcerting thoughts about her future with Jarod. What was she, twelve again? What were these schoolgirl _feelings_ all about? True, she had basically let him move in with her, when every other man hadn't made it to the toothbrush stage. Also true that she had a history with him, which enabled them to talk about anything and everything. Including her mother, about whom she _never_ spoke to anyone, ever, not even Reyna. And it was an incontrovertible fact that Jarod with his puppy dog eyes would now follow her to the ends of the earth and remain devoted to her to the end of his days, were she to allow it.

Parker was increasingly sure she would allow it. Which was a terrifying notion to contemplate.

Their nightly sybaritic excess was thoroughly delightful and she looked forward to it with relish, but she secretly knew it wasn't the best part of her day. Her favorite part was afterward, around the time Tech Support and Reyna came back from their evening classes. Then they tried to quiet down, Jarod usually gave up pestering her body too much, and they entwined their long limbs around each other and talked. Parker had truthfully never had conversations with anyone like that, discussions long into the night about a whole range of topics large and small. Jarod wanted to know everything about the human condition, and peppered her with random questions on that far-ranging topic as if she were an expert, which was laughable to say the least. Only he wouldn't laugh about it at all, he would say that she had observed more than she knew in her two short decades on the planet. The conversations were her version of letting go, letting someone see into her soul, something previous to Jarod's arrival she didn't think was possible.

Her lit professor barked something at her, and she bullshitted a response even though she hadn't heard the question. She was the only one in the class besides the prof who could read the works in the original language, a fact that allowed her to railroad practically any discussion. An easy A, plus good practice with her Russian. Today she was hopelessly distracted though, so thank god things were at a conclusion. She couldn't wait to get home and eat something, maybe listen to some of the terrible cassette tapes that people -- girls mostly, and who could blame them? -- persisted in giving Jarod while she dashed off an econ paper.

She walked the ten minutes back to the house and rounded the corner towards the spot where the sweepers were ubiquitously parked. Normally when she walked by she gave them a little nod in acknowledgment, and they did the same out of respect. Today, however, both sweepers were staring straight ahead as if hunting some abstract prey a hundred feet in front of them, and didn't even so much as flick an eye towards her. Odd.

Then she saw who was on the porch.

Jarod was sitting on a kitchen chair with his feet up on the railing, candy wrappers piled up next to him, aggressively boring his eyes like lasers at the sweepers. Clearly they had been in a standoff for awhile. Parker slowly climbed up the stairs to the porch.

"Hard day at the office, honey?"

He didn't waver his fixation. "They know I'm here. They've known I'm here for weeks." She patted his shoulder and he reached up and caressed her hand back, finally breaking his attention from the spies in front of them.

"What are you going to do now?"

"Time to call Sydney."


	12. Valentines

"Hello, Sydney." He managed to keep his voice much calmer than he felt.

There was a multi-second pause on the other end, then a sound as if Sydney were releasing his breath for the first time in weeks. "My God, Jarod. You're alive. When you didn't even call..." He sounded chronically fatigued and stressed. What had the Centre put him through after he left? Probably another T-board.

"I'm sorry I didn't let you know I was okay. I didn't know what to say."

Another long pause. Jarod wondered why it was so difficult for either of them to speak, when they had discussed so much before. Perhaps they were afraid of hurting each others feelings. "It's all right, Jarod. I was just worried about how you were managing out in the world, that's all."

"I seem to have survived. Although someone did call me a Martian on my first day out, which was not a completely inaccurate assessment. But I'm fine now."

"What have you been all of these weeks?"

"Traveling. Observing people. Making friends. Working. Learning how to love."

At that Miss Parker, who until then had been leaning against a kitchen counter inscrutably watching Jarod's end of the conversation, walked over and took his free hand in hers. He closed his eyes and brought it to his lips.

"You left some very important work here, Jarod. You say you have been working, but what have you been doing out there that could possibly help the world as much as what you've done at the Centre?"

"Nothing." He almost whispered it. "But it doesn't matter, Sydney, because I won't live like a prisoner any more. They can send all the sweepers they want and haul me back, but they can't force me to cooperate. You know a simulation done under duress will be useless."

"And if you were no longer required to live at the Centre? Would you be willing to return to work then?"

There it was, the option finally on the table. With a rush of insight, Jarod was suddenly _sure_ that Mr. Parker was standing there in Sydney's office, authorizing this line of negotiation. He knew it was his only out, besides a lifetime of running. He had known it even as he had sat there all morning, staring down the immutable sweepers. This was his chance to redefine his relationship with the Centre, carve out his role as something other than a science experiment or hunted prey. And, of course, he could keep _her_ as well. His reward, and his chain. Parker next to him was squeezing his hand, and he couldn't bear to look at her.

"I'll send over my requirements to come back and work for the Centre. Call me back tomorrow with their answer. Mr. Parker knows the number." And he hung up.

He was finally able to look at Parker then, her face graced with the exact mixture of horror and anger he expected. "Requirements to come back?! Jarod, you don't have to do this. You _shouldn't_ do this. They will never consider you to be some regular employee who can give two weeks notice and jump ship. You know too much."

"I know. But my only other option is to run. Change my identity and run, Pretend to be someone else forever. I hardly even know who I am as it is, but I know I don't want that." He reached out for her but she jerked away, standing back.

"It's because of me, isn't it? You won't run and have your freedom because of me! Well, I won't be responsible for that. Get your stuff and get out."

Without thinking about it, Jarod strode the three paces of distance between them, and pinned her against the fridge. "No," he whispered in her ear.

_"What?"_

"I said no." He leaned his weight on her, not so much that she couldn't get away with a little effort, but enough to feel the length of her body against his. "No, I won't leave." He sucked and then bit her neck. "No, I won't let you push me away because you're afraid of what might happen."

She gave it up then, and grabbed his face to pull him down to aggressively kiss him back. When they paused to breathe, she said, "I'm not afraid of what might happen, I know what will happen. They're _using_ me to put you back in that dungeon, as if I turned the key myself. Why didn't I slam the door in your face the minute you got here?" She was unbuttoning his pants even as she spoke, pulling everything down over his hips.

"You _are_ afraid." He hitched her long skirt up and hooked his fingers under her panties to pull them down. "You're afraid of the way we feel about each other, even when we're not doing _this."_ He pushed his fingers up into her while she cried out. "You're afraid I'm going to tell you 'I love you' and mean it, and you're afraid to say it back."

"Oh my God Jarod, will you just shut up and fuck me?"

"No. I'm still going to say it." He picked her up then, her back still against the fridge, so she could wrap her legs around him and he could enter her. Neither one of them could last long in such a position, and as he felt her spasming around him, he began to murmur "I love you, I love you, I love you" like a mantra.

When they were both done she slid her legs back down so he didn't have to hold up her entire weight, but they stayed there, standing with their hands all over each other, kissing. Breathing hard into her ear, he whispered again, "I still love you. Oh, look, you didn't spontaneously combust." She couldn't help but laugh then, wrapping her arms even tighter to hold him. A part of her wanted to cry, but Miss Parker opted to laugh instead.

 

******

 

A few days later they were at a house overlooking the Pacific, on a lush rug in front of a roaring fire, not even partially clothed. It was their last weekend before Jarod had agreed to be back in Blue Cove, and they decided to make it a clothing-prohibited affair. Although Jarod did backslide a bit when making breakfast, locating a ridiculous "Kiss the Cook" apron in the house for frying bacon. Parker declared he was hotter in the apron than with nothing at all.

Now he was curled up behind her on the floor, their backs to the fire and a map of the world in front of them, playing Risk. Which he would by all rights be killing her at, if it weren't for her rampant cheating.

"Okay, I'm ready to attack Greenland now."

"No, you're not prepared to do that."

"I'm not?"

"No, because a typhoon just destroyed half your fleet, see?"

"I don't think an Act of Miss Parker is a valid strategy in the quest for global domination. Also they don't have typhoons in Greenland."

"Well it should be, and they do if I say so." He chuckled and kissed her shoulder, then got up to retrieve something from a bag.

"Here, a Valentine's Day present."

"What? I thought watching you run around in the buff with guaranteed no interruptions _was_ the present. What's in it?"

"Open it." His face was solemn and a little nervous.

Parker ripped the shiny red paper off the box, and inside found another very small box. Her heart sunk in terror as she realized what it was. Steeling herself, she flipped it open and found ... a sapphire necklace.

"OH THANK GOD" she blurted, and Jarod burst out laughing. She threw the wrapping paper at him.

"Sorry, I couldn't resist torturing you a little."

She examined the necklace. It was gold with an intricate spiral pattern around the gem, of a style she had never seen before. "Did you _make_ this?"

"Yeah. I helped some of the laser guys over in Applied Physics with a problem they were having. They gave me the raw materials. The stone included, they use synthetic ones in certain applications, although I had to cut it."

"It's beautiful, Jarod. Thank you. Help me put it on, I don't think this counts as 'clothes'." He fastened the clasp under her hair and turned to look at the front of her. The deep azure color made her eyes shine an even deeper blue, as he hoped it would.

Parker curled her long arms around his neck in a deep embrace, the necklace trapped between them. "I''m going to miss you."

"It's only a month until spring break."

"A lot can happen in a month. Look what happened in the _last_ month. Although I do plan to introduce you to the joys of phone sex, so that's something to look forward to."

"That sounds anatomically improbable." She laughed.

"Wait here, I have something for you too." She returned with an equally small box decorated in red and gold ribbon. He smiled and shook it, trying to guess the contents. Something small and metallic. Obviously not a ring, so with his curiosity piqued he unwrapped it. The object was a key. "It's to my house."

"Okay?" said Jarod dubiously. "Although that might get awkward with your father. 'Gee, sir, should we carpool today? Have another crepe'."

Her smile turned into a full grin. "Not my _father's_ house, dummy. My house. My mother's summer house, up on St. Claire Hill about fifteen minutes out of Blue Cove. Daddy signed the deed over to me as a gift for my eighteenth birthday. I think he expected me to sell it, but I could never sell something she loved like that."

"You're going to let me stay there?" He imagined that was not going to sit well with Mr. Parker.

As if reading his mind she said, "Daddy will get over it. And the symbolism will not be lost on them, either. You, my young genius, belong to _me._ "

"Oh, really? I thought I made it clear I wasn't anybody's slave. Although in the grand scheme of things you're not too terrible a master to have."

"Hmmm, we need to test that hypothesis out. _Ex_ _haustive_ testing." And she pulled him towards the bedroom.


	13. Epilogue: Orientation day

The following Monday, Jarod nervously waited in line at the main check-in point in the lobby with a group of new recruits. He had never been in the lobby before. It was bright, sunny, beautiful: such a contrast with the lower sublevels it was hard to believe he was in the same building. The nervousness seemed misplaced as well. Obviously getting in that morning wasn't going to be a problem, the real test was whether they would let him leave that evening. He gave it 98 percent odds that the Centre would honor the agreement, giving their recent behavior, but the remaining two percent did merit a pause.

The Centre had acquiesced to most of his demands, including salary -- which he set at a level higher than Sydney's, to make a point -- vacation and other benefits, maximum working hours, an assistant from the secretarial pool, veto power over the content of the sims, and a complete cessation of his participation in any psychological or medical experiments. He also insisted that they give Angelo the option to live outside the building, along with any other projects of legal age, Pretender or otherwise. In exchange he would sign a full confidentiality agreement on all information to which he'd been given access for past simulations, and many details of his likely illegal upbringing. He also had to sign away intellectual property rights for anything he created under the auspices of a sim.

The one thing they didn't give in on was full access to his intake file, including whatever they had on his family, citing "confidentiality of a closed adoption agreement" despite the fact they had given him names when he was a child. All of which made Jarod suspicious as hell, but he had to add it to the lengthy list of things to investigate further once things settled down, including the heap of Catherine Parker mysteries.

Jarod spotted Sydney behind the security checkpoint waiting for him, an oddly paternal look of satisfaction on his face. Something about him seemed strange, and it took Jarod a moment to realize it was because he had never seen him in sunlight before. There were outdoor areas called "biotracts" that were supposed to be lovely; despite the fact that it was 35 degrees outside, he planned to eat lunch out there. Maybe Sydney would like to join him.

He reached the front of the line, and a bored-looking sweeper whom he didn't recognize took his temporary ID. They had sent it over to the summer house the previous evening, bearing the name "Jarod Turing." He had to grin at that, and planned to use the social security number he'd set up for HP as well. Why not, it was a real number now after all. The guard looked him up and down, yet another ridiculously young unassuming recruit. Then he saw Jarod's security clearance, and his eyes widened.

"Sir? Do you know the way down to that sublevel?"

"Yes, I think I can find it. Thank you."

He walked over to Sydney and neither one of them said a word at first. Then Sydney held out his hand to shake, as equals, and they went downstairs to get to work.

 


End file.
